


Emperor's New Clothes

by sunsetmog



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Famous Harry, Harassment, M/M, Mild Peril, Money Troubles, Non-Famous Louis, Outing, Pets, Relationship Negotiation, Secret Relationship, Tabloid Journalism, boys making some poor language choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:26:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 92,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5734798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/pseuds/sunsetmog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fact that Louis’s most precious belonging was a cat with a face like thunder and an uncanny ability to cover every single inch of Louis’s clothing with cat hair was something that Louis chose not to think about too much.</p><p>or: Harry’s a pop star and Louis isn’t, and there’s a non-disclosure agreement where there used to be a relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr [here.](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/post/137374234353/emperors-new-clothes-harrylouis-1)
> 
> Research undertaken for this including googling: “fluffy cat breeds”, “ugly persian cats”, “cats that hate you” “Asda smartprice value ready meals”, “flavours of Asda Tiger cat food in gravy” and “how can a cat be blue”.
> 
> You’re welcome. 
> 
> I have been having a bit of trouble writing my ongoing projects recently, so I thought I'd write something easy and fun and stress free, so, here you go. I did put it up on Tumblr first but I'm aware that AO3 is more accessible than Tumblr, so I'll go with here from here on in.
> 
> NB: this story deals with intimate photos being taken and shared without consent and discussion of this throughout.

“Humph?” Louis called, letting himself into his flat. He rattled his carrier bag a bit; that usually managed to coax Humphrey out of whichever fluff-covered corner he’d secreted himself in whilst Louis was at work. “Humph, it’s dinner time.”

There was what Louis hoped was a cat-related crash from the living room, and then Humph padded out into the hall, a ball of Persian grey and white fluff wearing the same silently judging frown he always wore, even when he was purring in Louis’s lap. He wove his way around Louis’s ankles as Louis stumbled out of his jacket and into the little kitchen-living room, and grabbed a clean cat bowl from the side by the sink.

Louis was one hundred per cent shit at looking after himself, but he was pretty good at making sure Humph was okay, even if _okay_ meant Asda Tiger cat food and not the expensive shit they’d had when Humph had been a kitten and everything had been different.

“Good day, huh?” Louis asked, putting down Humph’s bowl on the mat by the door. “Been busy taking over the world?”

Humph ignored him. Louis took that as a _yes_.

“Only want me for my food, don’t you, Kit?” He stroked the top of Humphrey’s head, and then dumped his rucksack on the floor and flopped down onto the sofa. His phone was almost out of charge, but he couldn’t be bothered to go and find his charger. 4% was definitely enough to reply to his texts from Niall and Liam; Niall wanted them all to go over to his on Saturday and have a barbecue, and Liam was inviting them both out for a pint after work tomorrow. He texted them both back a resounding _yes_ as he put the telly on, flicking through Freeview to find something to watch. His signal was shit.

Old episodes of _Top Gear_ on Dave it was, then.

There was a Smartprice chicken curry and rice microwave meal for one in his bag, but that involved standing up again and putting it in the microwave, and frankly, Louis had had enough of today. Margaret had gone off on one at him about getting back from lunch five minutes late, he’d had some shit customer on the phone having a go about the fucking subject line of a fucking email he’d sent out yesterday not being concise enough – as if that mattered – and to make matters worse, Lisa who sat next to him had the world’s worst headphones, and Louis had spent the whole fucking day having to listen to Harry Styles’ new album on tinny repeat without even being able to have any kind of choice in the matter.

Louis did not, as an absolute, desperate, never to be broken rule, listen to Harry fucking Styles if he could ever fucking help it.

“Humph,” he said, as if that would make his grumpy cat do anything he didn’t want to. “Humphrey. Sir Humphrey Fluffles.” Louis had not picked Humphrey’s name, and not one of Louis’s current friends would ever know that Humph’s name was anything other than Humph, but Louis’s cat was snooty at the best of times. “Sir Humphrey Fluffles Kittington. Get your arse over here and purr, all right?”

Louis’s cat had probably cost more than the combined cost of all of the rest of Louis’s possessions put together. The fact that Louis’s most precious belonging was a cat with a face like thunder and an uncanny ability to cover every single inch of Louis’s clothing with cat hair was something that Louis chose not to think about too much.

Sir Humphrey finished up his duck and chicken in gravy, licked his paws for a bit, and then came and sat on Louis’s stomach.

“Hi,” Louis said.

Humph looked at him.

“I know,” Louis said, scratching the back of Humphrey’s head. “I’m bored of shit food too.”

~*~

Friday afternoon was made a hundred times worse by Harry Styles hitting number one on both the singles and the album chart, and Lisa surreptitiously keeping Amanda who sat on the other side of Louis updated every time she came back from the loo with her phone.

“He’s on in a minute,” Lisa said, leaning over Louis’s desk to get Amanda’s attention. “Lou, lend Amanda your headphones so she can listen to the chart show.”

“Lend her yours,” Louis said, because Lisa’s computer background was Harry’s face and sometimes Louis let himself remember what Harry looked like when he came.

“Louis.”

“Fine,” Louis said, and passed his headphones over to Amanda. “Knock yourself out.”

It wasn’t that he hated Harry Styles, it was more that he just never wanted to think about him ever, ever again. Their relationship had exploded at the end, taking down Louis with it, and Louis had slunk back up north with the meagre remains of his stuff and a kitten that might or might not hate him.

The Non-Disclosure Agreement he’d been made to sign two weeks later had been the fucking icing on the fucking cake, though.

~*~

Luckily Liam hated his job as much as Louis did. At least Louis’s job didn’t include _Helpdesk Monkey_ as his almost official actual job title. Louis’s job description said _Administrative Assistant_ , and if it wasn’t for the fact that he had a cat to keep in tinned meat in gravy, Louis would have given it up a long time ago. Louis had responsibilities, though. That meant keeping a job he hated. 

“We need those shots,” Liam said, once they’d got a table in the corner of the pub, and Niall was heading over from the bar with a tray of drinks. “I said to her, have you switched it off and on again. She told me she had, but, like, she genuinely thought that turning your computer off meant switching the monitor off? She’s just left that thing running for, like, a year. It’s not surprising it’s stopped working. How thick do you have to be to not know how to turn your own computer off?”

“Pretty thick,” Louis agreed, taking the shots off the tray Niall was brandishing and lining them up next to the beers. With some judicious rearranging of meals this weekend, he could have two pints and a shot tonight with his last tenner, and still not have to go to the supermarket until Monday after work. There was cat food until Tuesday, so Sir Humphrey couldn’t complain. “What time do you want us round yours tomorrow, Nialler?”

“Whenever,” Niall said, plonking himself down next to Louis. “Lighting the barbecue about five, I think, so anytime after about three? If you can drag yourself away from your cat, that is.”

“He gets lonely by himself,” Louis said, a little sanctimoniously. He was broke, and he couldn’t afford to bring anything round to Niall’s for the barbecue. Normally he wouldn’t give a shit, he’d just turn up with a few cans of beer and a couple of bags of crisps, but he’d had his card refused trying to buy ten Pall Mall this morning, and his credit card was already at the limit. This tenner was his last until payday on Monday. If he skipped his second pint tonight, he could at least turn up tomorrow with some crisps.

Niall just laughed. “Bring Humph with you, and turn up whenever.”

Louis rolled his eyes, and grabbed his £1 shot. “Whatever,” he said. “Bottoms up, dickheads.”

~*~

The headline in _The Sun_ in the morning said _Harry Styles’ gay sex scandal_ , and the story continued onto pages four and five under the title _Harry’s secret gay shame_.

Louis saw it outside the petrol station as he walked over to Niall’s after lunch the following day. He saw it on the stand outside the newsagents, and a discarded one sticking out of the bin by the bus shelter, and then again when he went into the Tesco by Niall’s to look at their newspapers.

He didn’t see the picture of himself with Harry until he got outside of Tesco’s, until he unfolded the paper he'd just bought with his crisp money and glanced down at the pictures under _Harry’s secret gay shame_. Some guy had sold his story – getting it out there before the non disclosure agreement had been forced in his general direction, no doubt – and with his story he’d sold pictures too. The picture taking up most of page four was Harry asleep in between two naked guys. The quote on page five said, _Harry was an animal in bed. He wanted it every way. Said two of us wasn’t enough. He had a photoshoot in the morning but he didn’t care. He just wanted sex._

It didn’t sound like Harry. But then, maybe Louis hadn’t ever really known him all that well anyway.

The other, smaller pictures included one Louis remembered, one of Louis and Harry and Sir Humphrey when he was a tiny kitten, the three of them curled up on the bed with Harry holding the phone up over them to take a selfie, Harry kissing Louis’s temple. They’d only been topless but you couldn’t tell that from the picture.

Louis had done everything in his power to keep his relationship with Harry a secret from everything and everyone, and now there was a fucking picture in _the_ fucking _Sun_ , and it had all gone to fucking shit.

Fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to **goingmissing** for sitting next to me on the sofa just now and reading this through for me.

"Brought you this," Louis said, shoving his copy of _The Sun_ in Niall's general direction once he finally opened his front door. "Is Liam here?"

"In the living room. Thought you were bringing crisps?" Niall closed the door after Louis. "I've been texting you about flavours."

"Phone's out of charge." He popped his head around the living room door. Liam was sprawled out over Niall's sofa, flicking through the TV channels. "All right, Liam. Niall, can I borrow a charger?"

"Course. Why'd you bring me a copy of _The Sun_ instead of a packet of smoky bacon crisps? Bloody hell, is Harry Styles gay?"

"Looks like it." Louis fumbled around behind Niall's sofa for where kept his charger plugged in, mostly for Louis's benefit. He'd smashed the screen on his phone four months ago, and since then he'd been using an old Samsung which managed to hold its charge for a cracking five hours at a time. Being broke was the fucking worst. 

"Not just gay, but threesoming it up," Niall went on, flicking onto page four and waving the picture of Harry naked in bed with two guys in their general direction. Louis sat down carefully on the end of the sofa. Liam poked him in this thigh with his toes, a _hello_ of sorts. "Pretty shit, though, if you're banging two guys and the moment you fall asleep one of them's taking a selfie, though, and selling it to the papers. Hey, look at this one, this cat looks just like yours—" Niall stopped. "Louis."

"Yes, Niall?" Louis wrapped his hand around Liam's ankle. He didn't look at either Liam or Niall, even though Liam kept bumping his foot into Louis's thigh. 

"That is Humph, right? In the picture?"

"Yep," Louis said, still refusing to meet their eyes. 

"This picture where you're naked with Harry Styles and he's kissing you, that picture. That's your cat in that picture."

"Yep," Louis said again, because once upon a time he'd loved that picture. The three of them together, him and Harry and their baby kitten. It had been a long time since he'd let himself think about it. 

Liam had stopped kicking him. Louis kept a hold of his ankle even so. 

"Fucking hell, Lou," Liam said, as Niall showed him the picture. "What the bloody hell are you doing naked with Harry Styles? Since when did you know him?"

Louis shrugged. "I can't talk about it," he said finally. 

"Don’t give me that crap," Liam said. "Tell us everything, come on."

"I can't," Louis said. "I really can't." He'd wanted to talk about Harry for the last two years, for the whole time he'd been back up north and smarting over the fact his boyfriend had dumped him just before they were due to go away together in favour of spending two weeks in Miami with his rich friends. He'd wanted to talk about Harry when he'd gone round to pick up his stuff only to find the locks changed, and he'd wanted to talk about Harry when he'd seen him a month later holding hands with a terribly pretty actress from Sheffield who'd just made it big in America. He hadn't been smart enough when they'd first broken up to recognise that there'd be a non-disclosure agreement with his name on it on the horizon, and he'd left it too late to open his mouth. 

They should never have kept it a secret in the first place, but they had, and Louis had spent the last two years and the year before that dealing with the fallout of keeping it secret.

Louis didn't have much left in this world, but what he did have, he wasn't willing to lose. They weren't taking anything from him, and they definitely weren't taking anything from his family. He was keeping his mouth firmly shut. 

"Don't be a spoilsport," Liam said. "Come on."

Niall narrowed his eyes. "You can't talk about it, or you won't talk about it?"

Louis shrugged. "Can't," he said, avoiding their eyes. He ran his thumb over Liam's ankle. "Do you think it's easy to make out that it's me?"

"Kind of," Niall said, a little apologetically. "Especially if they've met your cat." 

Luckily not that many people got to meet Louis's cat. Humph was Louis's favourite thing, fluffy and grey and white and fierce and with a little squashed face like thunder, but with Humph came Louis's crap flat. Louis's crap flat with its damp bedroom wall and lack of cupboard doors in the kitchen, with the pink shower that worked better if you stood in the middle of the cubicle and didn’t look at the walls or floor, his crap flat with the saggy, tired furniture that Louis hated. It was cramped and weirdly shaped and not designed for parties. It was barely designed for living, but other than the dripping roof in the kitchen and the leak in the bathroom, it mostly did what it was supposed to, and kept a roof over Louis's head. 

"If they didn't know my cat," Louis persisted, thinking of everyone at work. "What then?"

"Dunno. Maybe not. I mean, it looks like you, but no one's going to expect to see a picture of you naked in bed with Harry Styles in _The Sun_ , right? It's not like your name's on it." Liam poked at the picture with his fingertip. "Just pretend it's a lookalike."

"Suppose," Louis said, sliding off the arm of the sofa and onto the seat next to Liam. "Can we talk about something else?"

Louis pretended he didn't see the look Niall and Liam exchanged over the top of his head. 

~*~

He switched his phone on later, after they'd got the barbecue lit and Niall and Liam were outside with a couple of beers, poking the charcoal with a stick. Louis slipped back inside, trying to ignore the way his stomach was churning. Liam and Niall were being weird with him – hardly surprising, considering that Louis was in the fucking paper but couldn't tell them _why_ – and what was weird was that Harry Styles probably hadn't thought about Louis in two fucking years, but today he had to have done. He'd have seen the article and he would have seen the pictures stolen from his phone, and even if it was just for a moment, he would have had to have thought about Louis. 

They'd loved each other once, or so Louis had thought. Even if it hadn't ended up like that. They'd had feelings for each other once. 

He flicked back through the paper, left folded up on the coffee table. There wasn't enough of a scandal in just being gay anymore; they had to make it dirty in whichever way they could. Harry's threesome, his work ethic – _he didn't care about his photoshoot, he just wanted sex_ – his steamy, sordid, secret hook-ups, the distinct delineation between the Harry the world saw where he was polite and kind and a bit random and infinitely gentle, and this Harry of the photographs and the sold story where he wanted to fuck two guys at once and wanted it to be sordid and desperate and dirty. 

Harry's management company and the label must be going properly mental. 

Good. Louis hated them. 

~*~

Louis's family hadn't ever read _The Sun_ , and they'd never met Humph in the flesh, but that didn't necessarily mean they wouldn't see it. It didn't mean he wasn't hoping to God they never did. 

They'd seen it. The first text message in his inbox that wasn't from Niall about smoky bacon crisps was one from his mum that just said, _I don't understand. Please call me. Please answer your phone. I love you xx_

Louis hadn't called her in a month. It just seemed easier not to, a lot of the time. 

Sometimes he missed her so much it hurt. 

"Everything all right?" Niall asked. "You've been in here ages."

"My mum's seen the picture," Louis said. 

"They didn't know either?"

Louis looked down. He didn't know what he could say and what he couldn't. When he'd signed the non-disclosure, they'd told him he couldn't say anything to anyone. Ever. He was so used to constantly checking everything he wanted to say. "She hadn't seen the picture before either."

"Lou—"

"Leave it," Louis said, as his phone started to ring. 

He'd wanted to delete Harry's number, back in the day, but he'd decided against it out of pure spite. If Harry ever called, Louis wanted to be able to reject him knowingly. 

His screen said _Harry_ , and Louis never wanted to speak to him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/post/137425934558/emperors-new-clothes-2-harrylouis)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am fairly sure that Niall's cousin works in finance, but in this he's a lawyer. Also I couldn't remember his name, so I asked Twitter, to which I got a series of tweets back that just yelled WILLIE at me (and one that yelled PENIS, but I can't be entirely certain that that wasn't unrelated). Other things I have asked Twitter (and real life people) in the last 24 hours include: "are monetary gifts from sugar daddies taxable" and "do you have to do a self assessment form to declare your sugar baby income" and "imagine the HMRC audit" (less of a question and more of a niche fic request). NB sugar baby questions are unrelated to this story. Sorry. Unbetaed. Sorry again.

"You going to answer that?" Niall asked, after it had rung four times. 

"Nope," Louis said, and pressed the red button. "He can fuck right off."

Niall let out a breath. "Lou—"

Louis's phone started ringing again, Harry's name plastered across his screen. If he hadn't broken his old phone, Harry ringing him would have meant a picture of Harry pulling a stupid face and leering at him, along with whichever stupid ringtone Harry had programmed into his phone. 

Louis's sim card had brought Harry's number with it, if none of the old settings. 

He hung up on him again. 

"Don't you want to, I don't know, find out what's going on?" Niall asked a little hesitantly. 

"Not particularly," Louis lied. "He's not having my fucking cat."

"Right," Niall said, as Louis's phone started ringing a third time. "Do you maybe want to just tell him that? Make him stop ringing?"

"For fuck's sake," Louis said, and he pressed the green button. "What the fuck do you want?"

"Louis?"

"Who else," Louis said, making a face at Niall in an effort to make him go the fuck away. Niall sat down on the end of the sofa and made a face right back. 

"Hi. Um. How are you?" Hearing Harry again after two years of trying to ignore every mention of him in the media was weird. Harry sounded sort of thick and stuffed up; his voice sounded dull, like he'd been crying. 

"Had better days. Thanks, by the way. For the picture in the paper."

Harry made a soft sound down the phone. "Sorry. I wanted to know if you'd seen it. And I really am sorry."

"Not sure that makes it all right, Haz."

"I know. And, look – I know you don't want to talk to me, and I shouldn't be ringing, but… it's been such a terrible couple of days, okay? And, like, I know you probably don't want to do me any favours after you're in the paper and it's my fault, but, like, if they figure out who you are, they're going to maybe come and ask you if you want to give your story, too, and, like…" he trailed off. "I was sort of hoping you wouldn't."

"You were sort of hoping I wouldn't," Louis said carefully, refusing to meet Niall's gaze. "That's why you're ringing."

"Yes. I know I don't have any right, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask, right? If you wouldn't, like, sell your story."

"I'd quite like to sell my story," Louis said. "I'm really fucking broke, and I'd like to keep my cat in the nice kind of cat food, and I'm pretty sure a few hundred quid would do my credit card fucking wonders. If I had the fucking option, I'd sell my story today, tell everyone what a giant fucking dickhead you are, but I can't, can I? And you know I fucking can't. So why are you ringing?"

"You'd get more than a few hundred quid," Harry said, then he stopped himself. "What do you mean, you can't?"

Louis laughed. He didn't mean it to sound quite so painful as it did. "I wish I'd never met you," he said finally. "I wish I'd never fucking fallen in love with you. I wish I'd had the sense to tell everyone everything before your fucking lawyers turned up on my doorstep, but I didn't, did I? So no, I'm not telling anyone anything, and you've got the paperwork to prove it. Is there anything else?"

Harry didn't say anything to that. He didn't say anything at all. 

"I'm taking that as a _no_ ," Louis said, and hung up. 

Niall looked at him. 

"I can't talk about it," Louis said, because Harry's lawyers had threatened him with losing everything if he ever even considered telling anyone he'd ever done more with Harry than just meet him. He'd come out in a cold sweat just because he'd admitted to having been in love with Harry with Niall in the room.

"I know," Niall said. "You said. But you said Harry's lawyers. You did, like, get your own lawyer to look at it, right? Whatever it is. That paperwork."

"Where am I going to get the money to pay for a lawyer?"

"That's a no, then, right?"

"Niall. I'm well hungry, mate. What's happening with that barbecue?"

"Willie would do you mates rates," Niall persisted. "He's a pretty good lawyer."

"No," Louis said, because he couldn’t afford smoky bacon crisps, let alone any of Niall's cousin's legal fees. "It's fine. Come on, let's just have some food, all right? Can't leave Payno to do the bangers, he'd tried to serve me a raw one last time. Black on the outside and well pink on the inside. He's fucking shit at sausages."

Niall waited a moment. "Fine," he said. "Let's have a beer, you distract Liam, and I'll do the sausages."

~*~

Later that night, a bit drunk but unable to sleep, Louis curled up under his bedclothes at home with Humph in his lap and texted Harry, _I'm still so fucking angry with you . it doesn’t go away even tho I want it to. Im not selling my story cos I'm not that much of a cunt so don’t call me again._

His phone didn't buzz with a reply even though he waited for it to. 

It took him a long time to fall asleep. 

~*~

He was hungover in the morning, and his phone was out of charge because he'd forgotten to plug it in before he fell asleep. He made tea, fed Humph, and sprawled on the sofa with the telly on, Humph taking up furry, grumpy residence across his knees. Louis had had his broadband cut off a few months ago, but Liam and Niall had clubbed together for his birthday to get him a pay as you go internet dongle, so as long as he didn't want to watch endless porn videos, he could get away with not having to top it up all that often. It was enough for checking his emails and faffing about, so long as he didn't try to do anything too exciting. 

Not that he was going to get a chance to do anything other than check his email; his inbox was full of Facebook friend requests and Twitter notifications from people adding him as a friend. 

Back when his photo hadn't been splashed all over _The Sun_ and no one knew who he was, it was probably a good idea that his profile picture was him and Humph. He'd had about ten friends on Twitter; back when his phone hadn't been knackered, he'd mostly used it for talking about the football and snapping pictures of his cat for Liam and Niall to dutifully like. He hadn't used it in about six months. He didn't go on Facebook much either. Having his profile picture be him and Humph was slightly more problematic when it was practically the same shot as the one in _the_ fucking _Sun_ , except with 100% less Harry Styles. 

This was probably going to go badly. 

~*~

He switched his phone on after he'd made himself a cheese and chutney sandwich for lunch later on. Message after message after message beeped through; his fame was spreading. Only one of them was from Harry, though, and his was the only one he bothered to open. 

_I didn’t know about the non disclosure agreement. I never would have asked you to sign it. Ignore it and say whatever you want to about us. I never wanted to stifle your voice. I'm sorry I ever asked you not to tell your story. I didn't know you didn't think you could._

Louis rolled his eyes. _It’s a fucking legal document you idiot . You think if I just ignore it your lawyers wont take me for everything just like they told me they would ?? stop being a dickhead._ He pressed send, then opened up another message, typing, _and your never having my cat so don’t think you can steal him back ok he never loved you anyway_

For fuck's sake. 

Harry wasn't having his cat. He wasn't having anything of Louis's anymore, but he definitely, definitely wasn't having his cat. 

Louis shut down his computer, ignored the rest of the messages on his phone, and went to drown himself in the shower. 

If he pretended that he wasn't outed as one of Harry Styles' shameful gay sex secrets, then maybe he'd be able to get on with his fucking life, and leave Harry Styles behind him. Maybe this time, he'd actually succeed at forgetting him. Maybe this time, he'd actually get to move on. 

He hadn't grown up wanting his fifteen seconds of fame to be under a _shameful gay sex secret_ headline. It hadn't gone like that in his head at all. 

"This isn't fair in the slightest," he told Sir Humphrey, who – as usual – was sitting in the sink and watching him shower. "Your other daddy's a bastard."

Humph meowed at him, which Louis took as approval. 

"A bastard," Louis said again, even as soap ran down his face. "A total fucking bastard."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's google searches: "tiny persian kittens" "grey and white persian cats" "grey and white persian kittens" "blue persian kittens," "persian kittens that hate you" "persian kittens grumpy" "squashed persian kittens" "tiny grouchy puffballs" (i don't recommend this one so much) and "tiny grouchy puffball kittens" (this one is much better). There are literally too many kittens to link to, so I will limit myself to these three: [exhibit A](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/be/41/08/be410822b8d62d5db5f73a0f07d5f631.jpg), [exhibit B](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/8c/9a/12/8c9a1278b7af57c683b091b7b9ae6c69.jpg), and [exhibit C](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d7/c2/d5/d7c2d5ba9eff9e9ecc29e42b2be4242d.jpg). 
> 
> Unbetaed. Sorry.

Sundays were supposed to be spent down the pub, or eating a proper roast dinner, or watching the footie with his mates. Louis wasn't supposed to be spending his Sunday by himself, with no credit on his phone, no internet, no money to go out, and nothing to do but watch the telly and try and teach his cat to do tricks. 

Humph was having none of it. 

It was one of his bored days, where Humph wanted to be everywhere that Louis was, sitting on the TV remote and padding into Louis's lap the moment Louis lazily thought about reading one of the books he had lying about. Honestly, there wasn't much to do when there wasn't any fucking money to do anything with, and Louis was totally fucking broke. Credit card maxed, overdraft at its limit, and nothing to do but wait until midnight when his pay went into his bank. 

Being broke was the worst. Being bored was even worse than that. 

"Why can't you play football, huh?" Louis said, batting a scrumpled up ball of paper in Humph's general direction. Humph put out a lazy paw and poked it. "We could take on the world and win, the two of us. We'd be fucking awesome."

Humph meowed. 

"That's right, we should have named you Fifa. You'd have made a nice Fifa, wouldn't you, babe?" He leaned over to scratch him behind his ears. "It was your stupid bastard daddy, wasn't it? Naming you something stupid." Humph leaned into his touch, closing his eyes as Louis gave him a good scritch. "Fifa is way better than Fluffles." 

Louis had been a dog person his entire life, right up until the moment Harry had presented him with a tiny, fluffy puffball of a kitten, so little that he'd curled up into the crook of Louis's arm and squeaked helplessly at him before falling asleep. Louis had been a dog person right up until Harry had kissed him hello and told Louis he'd bought him a present. Humph, who'd been just old enough to be without his mum, who'd been tiny and grey and white and grumpy faced and who had followed Louis around from the moment Harry had presented him to him. Humph, who'd been the only saving grace of a break up that had torn Louis's heart to pieces and not quite managed to fix him back together right. 

"Love you," Louis said, because no one else was around to hear him. "Stupid cat. Why can't you play football, huh?"

Humph padded onto his lap and started kneading Louis's stomach. 

"I know," Louis sniffed. "You've got much more important things to do than pass a stupid ball back. You think you've got time to tell me what the fuck I should be doing about that fuckwit shagging around enough that it gets me in the paper?"

Humph meowed. 

"Totally. I think we should go round there and kick Harry in the balls, too. Great idea, kit. You get your claws out, I'll put the boot in. Stupid bastard." He stopped, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "You won't tell anyone, will you, Humph? That I'm crying over that stupid fucking dickhead?" He sniffed again. "Course you won't, will you? Because you're the fucking best."

Louis pulled his sleeves down over his hands and scrubbed at his eyes. 

"I'm not crying," he said, because if you said something long enough and hard enough it had to start coming true, it _had to_. "I'm not fucking crying over Harry fucking Styles." 

Humph curled up in his lap, dug his claws into Louis's thighs, and went the fuck to sleep. 

~*~

He'd met Harry by accident, a weird confluence of events that had funnelled narrower and narrower until it was him and Harry side by side with no choice left to make but to talk to each other. Louis and his Donny mates going to London for a big weekend, putting in for tickets to X Factor on the off chance and getting the Sunday night results show instead of the Saturday night performances. A late one on Saturday and storming hangovers on Sunday, piss-awful weather, the rain coming down like nobody's business. A fight in the pub on Sunday afternoon over something fucking stupid and having it escalate. Louis going off in a sulk and getting rained on and heading over to the X Factor studios anyway because it was better than arguing in a pub in Kensal Green because some dickhead hadn't looked at a map when they'd booked the hostel. Louis being the single last person let into the studio, because no one else had come alone, being rushed in even after the show had started, a lady with a clipboard hurrying him round the back of the studio audience, security pushing him back against the wall as an entourage passed him by. Dancers, dancers, dancers, Harry fucking Styles, X Factor runner up from two years ago, a moment of eye contact and then gone. Louis taking an unoccupied seat in the friends and family section, labelled with the name of one of the contestants, dripping wet from the rain and having to disrobe even as Dermot O'Leary was talking to camera. 

Harry performing his new single, Louis's heart in his mouth, and then the rest of the show in a weird damp blur before being mistakenly ushered out with the rest of the friends and family audience members direct into the celebrity bar. Louis with nowhere to go other than back to his mates at the hostel, so buying a drink instead, a pint of Carling, leaning back against the wall and trying to take it all in. 

Ten minutes later, Harry showing up to buy a drink, jostling elbows with Louis by accident. 

Louis, taking his courage into his hands and trying to ignore the thump of his heart as he said _hi_ , and _I voted for you to win_ , and _your album's great_. 

Harry's soft, happy smile coinciding with the gentle fading of Louis's heterosexuality. 

Louis had gone home with him that night and had never really left. Famous straight pop star Harry Styles, the boy who'd broken Louis's heart so resolutely that even now he had to be careful to hold all the shards together. 

That stupid fucking boy who'd ruined Louis's fucking life. 

~*~

Louis answered the phone when it rang later, the telly on in the background and Humph laid out over his lap like a stretched out fuzzball, his tummy all bared for Louis to rub. 

"What the fuck are you calling for?" he asked, in lieu of hello. 

Harry breathed at him down the phone. "I'm sorry," he said, voice thick. "I don't know where I went wrong. I'm sorry."

"Fucking two boys at once, I think. Should have confiscated their phones at the door, probably. Life lesson, that."

"I don't even know if I did," Harry said, voice catching. "Think it was just one after the other. I thought I'd feel less lonely."

Louis clenched his hand into a fist. "I hate you. I hate that you're telling me this."

"Why'd you answer your phone?" Harry sounded drunk. 

"Because I've got no credit to call anyone, and I've not got any money for internet, either, and I'm broke until tomorrow, and I'm pissed off, and I get to be pissed off at you. It's either you or my cat, and Humph doesn't deserve it. You do, though. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"I've got no idea," Harry said. "I don't even know. Everyone's been worried. Nick cried on me last week."

"I don't care. I've got to go to fucking work tomorrow. What am I supposed to say to people that won't get your lawyers mad at me?"

"I'll call them off. You can say what you want. I promise."

"Your promises don't mean shit," Louis said, because they didn't. Harry had promised to go away with him once, just the two of them, a holiday for their anniversary. Harry had gone to Miami instead. "I wouldn't trust you if you paid me to."

"I don't know where it went wrong," Harry said, like Louis hadn't spoken. "I don't know why I lost you. I loved you so much."

"You didn't," Louis said. "Anyway, I loved you too much. That's what you said, isn't it? Creepily co-dependent, that's what you called it, wasn't it? I never gave you any fucking space to be yourself. Well, you got all the fucking space you wanted, and you're still ringing me." He was so angry it felt like his insides were on fire, his stomach twisting, hands hot. "You didn't want to be out. You weren't. You didn’t want me. You got that. You got everything you wanted, and you've still ruined my life. What the fuck more do you want from me?"

"I'm sorry," Harry said, and he was crying now, and that was supposed to make Louis feel something, but it just made him more angry. "I'm so, so sorry. I messed it all up. I was scared and I was stupid and I got caught up in this whole—I don't know. I got caught up and I pushed and I pushed until you went away and I'm so sorry. I never should have said any of that stuff to you."

Louis didn't say anything to that. He'd been alone in London apart from Harry, working a shit job making terrible coffees and giving people the wrong partially defrosted muffins in a shit Starbucks rip off. He'd been Harry's secret and it hadn't ever been like the films or the stories. He hadn't been swept up into this famous celebrity lifestyle, friends with DJs and models and actors and singers. He hadn't met any of them, he'd just gone round to Harry's when Harry had nothing else on and the two of them had had endless, amazing sex. For the longest time, how they were when they were alone together was enough, Harry desperately in love and Louis giving up everything to be with him. 

It hadn't been enough in the end, though. 

Harry hadn't been wrong when he'd said that Louis loved him too much. He'd been his whole fucking world. 

Louis always had been a total fucking idiot. 

"I'll make it up to you," Harry said after a minute, his voice thick. "I'll make it all up to you."

"I don't want you to," Louis said. "You couldn't." 

"I haven't got anyone," Harry said. "I haven't got anyone and I don't know how to make any of it better. I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to fix me."

The thing was, that broke Louis's heart just as much as any of the rest of it. 

"Don't," he said softly. "Don't make me feel anything for you. I'm not sorry for you. You broke my fucking heart. It's not fair."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Please don't," Louis begged. "Please, Harry."

When Harry hung up, Louis buried his face in Humphrey's fur, and tried his best not to cry.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there were any weird google searches today. I've let myself down. I can only apologise. This is still unbetaed.

Monday morning was always the shittest time of the week - late Sunday night coming a close second - but this Monday morning was particularly awful. Louis had slept like someone with shit to think about, tossing and turning, getting up to go to the loo, waking the cat up, the cat then waking him up in revenge, then Louis getting cold and having to go and find a hoodie to try and sleep in. His alarm going off had been the laminated book of dreams' version of hell itself, a startlingly piercing continuous beep followed by him having to do his daily re-tune of the FM radio to try and pick up something other than static. 

Then there was only the remains of the loaf for toast for breakfast, so he slathered smartprice strawberry jam on the crust and waited for the kettle to boil, his stomach rebelling after not enough sleep and far too much worrying. 

The thing was, Louis was holding onto his life by the skin of his teeth, and the chances of it all coming down around his ears were getting exponentially higher the longer this Harry story continued to be in the limelight. Literally nobody knew how close he was to not being able to pay his rent every month. The interest on his credit card was sky high, and the past few months he'd had to get money out on his credit card to pay back in for the minimum payment. He'd had his internet cut off, had had to cancel his phone contract the moment it ticked past eighteen months, and had failed to have enough money in his bank account to pay the gas and electric Direct Debits two months in a row. His contract on this place wasn't up for another five months, but even if he did want to break the contract, he had no rent or deposit to move anywhere else, and any credit check worth their shit would chuck him out on his ear anyway. 

He still owed his mum and Mark the money they'd paid out to get him out of his contract in Doncaster when he'd upped sticks and disappeared off to London because of a relationship he couldn't tell either of them about, and if the guilt about owing them over two grand wasn't bad enough, the prospect of asking for more help to get him out of another fucking hole of his own making was enough to keep him up at night, even without the opportunity on the horizon of falling foul of that non-disclosure agreement and having to face down Harry's lawyers. 

God, it was all fucking shit. It was so fucking shit and there wasn't anyone he could talk to about it. Liam and Niall were both great, but he wasn't telling them he could barely afford food every month. He had to budget bits of money just to see them and pretend that everything was okay. 

This wasn't how he imagined it all going. He felt sick. 

~*~

Lisa looked at him funny when he got into work, so he put all of his effort into trying to look like everything was completely normal. 

"All right weekend?" she asked, eyebrow raised, as he sat down with a cup of coffee from the crap machine in the kitchen. 

"Yeah, pretty much," he said, pretending to frown. "Saw my mates, had a barbecue and a beer. Same old, same old. You? How's it going with whats-his-face?" 

"Chucked him," Lisa said. The background on her computer screen was still Harry. Louis tried not to think about how he used to make him come. "You've got a cat, right?"

Something inside of Louis shrivelled up. "Is this cos I'm always covered in cat hair? Is that what gave it away?"

Lisa glanced over Louis's shoulder to where Amanda was sitting, stirring sweetener into her tea. Louis disagreed with that on principle, but today wasn't the day for a fight over the right way to drink tea. "Something like that. Uh. Did you see the paper?"

"Not really," Louis lied. He logged onto his machine, but it always took forever to stop faffing about and actually give him his Outlook and his database access. He could only stare at a loading screen for so long. He kept on staring, even though it was starting to be awkward. "Why?"

"No reason," Lisa said, shifting to look past Louis at Amanda again. "Did you see, um, about Harry Styles?"

The Outlook logo on his desktop was blurring, he was staring at it so hard. "Heard about it, yeah."

"There was a picture that looked like you," Lisa persisted. "You and Harry and a cat. It was all over the internet?"

"Really? I must have a twin," Louis said, clicking approximately fifteen times on his email in a tired attempt at making it open quicker. He reached under the desk for his rucksack, trying to find his battered old iPod, switching his phone off at the same time. He hadn't had time to put any credit on it yet, or check that he'd been paid, and there was a mass of text messages and voicemails he couldn't reply to. He couldn't check his voicemails until he got some credit either, because apparently being poor was the worst. It had been free to get his voicemails when he'd had a fucking contract. 

He was a really bad liar. He wasn't an idiot. They knew. 

He shoved his headphones in, turned the volume up – thankful their boss could be a pain in the arse about them getting on with their work, particularly when it was a Monday morning and they were hungover from the weekend - and concentrated on getting through his work. 

~*~

Lunchtime saw him darting out of the building the moment 12.30 turned up, phone in his pocket, debit card clutched in his hand. He got a pack of bread rolls and a tub of egg and bacon sandwich filler from Sainsbury's so he could make a sandwich in the kitchen at work, then went across the road to get a top-up for his phone and a packet of cigarettes. He smoked so rarely now because he couldn't fucking afford it, but nothing felt better than that first drag after a couple of days of needing one. 

Especially because _The Mirror_ had pictures of Harry stumbling drunk out of a club on its front cover. Louis didn't buy a copy. If Lisa and Amanda were out of the way when he got back to the office, he'd look it up online. Maybe. He might drop by the library on his way home from work, use the computers there where nobody would watch him. Or maybe he'd just ignore the whole thing.

The wind was bitter, and he hid round the back of work to have his cigarette, hood up against the cold, and switched his phone on. Topping up was a faff with cold fingers, and more messages came in as he was waiting for his credit to kick in. They were mostly numbers he didn't recognise, the same three or four coming in over and over again. Voicemail notifications on top of that. He wasn't spending his whole fucking credit on getting his voicemails, but he couldn't keep ignoring them. 

He dialled, and it took him a whole half a second to figure out it was a fucking shit idea. 

_"Louis Tomlinson? This is Rhoda McIntyre from the Newsroom at The Sun. We know that you're the guy in the picture with Harry Styles. We'd love to talk to you, and I'm sure that you'd love to talk to us. I'm sure we can arrange some satisfactory recompense. If you could give me a ring on—"_ Louis hung up. Fifteen voicemails, and all but one from numbers he didn't recognise. The last one was from his mum, but his shame sat too heavy to call her back. He'd always promised not to lie, and it was all he'd done for years. 

He opened a text message instead. _If your not to hungover from getting wasted and in all the papers can you tell me how to get these journalists to stop calling me?? This is doing my head in_

He didn't get a reply until he was back inside and eating his egg and bacon sandwich in the corner of the office kitchen. 

_I don't know. I just keep making everything worse. I don't know how to fix any of this for you and I wish I could._

Louis stared down at his phone. He typed out _am I expected to feel sorry for you ????_ one-handed and pressed send. 

_No. I just wish I could make it up to you. I did everything wrong when it came to you._

_Yeah_ , Louis texted back. He switched his phone off after that, and went back to the office to fend off Lisa and Amanda's attempts to figure out if he really did have a lookalike out there who'd fucked Harry Styles. 

~*~

There was a journalist waiting on his doorstep when he got back from work, heavy shopping bag in hand. 

"Louis Tomlinson? I'd like to talk to you."

"I don't know who you are," Louis said, trying to hunch his shoulders up against the cold, not drop cat food and a value ready meal on the ground, and find his door key all at the same time. 

"Rhoda McIntyre," she said. "I've been trying to get in contact with you. I'm from _The Sun_."

"I don't listen to my messages. And I don’t want to talk to you."

"You were Harry Styles' gay boyfriend, weren't you? We've got pictures."

Louis's hand stilled on the Yale lock. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, and his voice sounded high pitched even to his ears. 

"You weren't just a one-night stand, Louis. I'm sure you've got a story to tell. I'm sure you could use the extra money." She glanced up at his flat, at the battered doorway sandwiched in between a Cash Converters and a hairdressers that had seen better days. There was a closed-down Chinese takeaway two shops down with a health and safety notice in the window that mentioned mice. "What's he like in bed, Louis? Is he kinky? Why'd he lie about being gay? Three in a bed, huh? Did he ever do that with you? Another guy? Did he make you say yes? Did you like it too?"

Louis couldn't get his key to turn in the lock. Sometimes it got stiff in the cold. "I've got nothing to say to you," he managed finally, shoving his elbow into the door so that it burst open. "So why don't you piss off and find a real story to cover?"

"Oh, Louis," Rhoda said. "You tell that to your ex-boyfriend. Everyone loves a salacious scandal. Three in a bed? It's got them all hooked. It's got everyone hooked. And you were the boyfriend he was keeping hidden. We've got the pictures."

"Piss off and get a real job," Louis said, and he slammed the door. He stumbled up the stairs, over the piles of unclaimed mail and bits of crap that had been there since he'd moved in, and tried to unlock his front door. 

Inside he could hear Humph meowing. 

"I'm home, baby," he said, once he'd got the door open. He kicked it shut behind him, and dropped down on his knees so that Humph could pad over and press his face against Louis's chest. Louis wasn't crying, he wasn't. He was just so sick of being on his own. "You're not a bastard, are you? You're the best thing ever."

Humph batted him in the chest again, and stalked back into the other room to stand by his food bowl. Louis wiped his nose on his sleeve, got the half empty tin out of the fridge door, and filled up Humph's food and water bowl. He sat on the floor by the fridge, still in his coat, and tried not to give in to how desperate and alone he felt. 

His cat couldn't protect him from the world, even if he wanted him to. 

He waited a while before he sent Harry a text. _This is all your fault . there was someone from the sun here when I got home from work. She said she had pictures of us ._

_I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry._

_Not good enough,_ Louis texted back. _You just keep ruining my life._

_Tell me what I can do to make this up to you. anything._

Louis waited until Humph had curled up in his lap, licking his paws, grumpy face batting at Louis's chest until he shifted position into the one Humph wanted. _Make it go away_ , he typed. _Make everything stop being terrible . make it all ok again. Make it stop hurting._

Harry's reply just said: _ok._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's exciting Google searches: "selfridges weekend bags" "Mens holdalls" "bags that look expensive that harry styles would probably carry" "waltzing frogs" (someone has to google this stuff) "kittens that look like they love you" "[protective persian cats](http://www.bandofcats.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/cat-wallpaper_68.jpg)" and "[persian cats protecting you](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b8/02/36/b80236633d69c017ea04b08a1f01e665.jpg)".

Louis's phone woke him up at half four in the morning. "Hello?" he managed, still bleary-eyed, blinking awake, Humph meowing at him for making him move. 

"Hi," Harry said. "I'm outside. Can I come in?"

"It's the middle of the night." Louis wasn't awake yet. He had to still be dreaming. The duvet was pulled up over his head. It was freezing.

"I know. I'm sorry. I just—this was the only time I knew no one would be watching. I'm just—I don't know how to make it right. I don't know how to fix anything and I want to make it right."

Louis squeezed his eyes shut. "This isn't fair," he said. "It's not fair."

"You don't have to let me in. I don't… God. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have come."

"No. It's all right." Louis threw back the covers. It was fucking freezing. He shoved his feet into a ratty pair of Vans as he turned the lights on, trying to find a hoodie in amongst the clothes on his floor. He was already mostly dressed because it was so cold in his flat. "I'll come down."

Thing was, even though it was someone he hated, someone whose fault all of this was, he was so fucking tired of being alone. And even after everything, even though he hated him, he still wanted Harry to be okay.

Louis was a self-destructive dickhead sometimes.

There wasn't anyone at the door downstairs when he went down, but there was a car parked over the other side of the road. Harry wasn't in the driving seat though, so Louis glanced down the road. Maybe it was a joke; maybe Harry was still in London with his friends, drinking stupid cocktails and making fun of Louis just because he could. Stupid Louis Tomlinson, giving everything up for Harry fucking Styles, Harry who'd never wanted to make the two of them public, who'd chucked Louis over at the first sign of something better coming along. 

It wasn't that Louis was close to tears; it was more that he was just so close to the edge he couldn't fucking figure out how to stay on the safe side and not tip over and hit the bottom with a thump. His shoulders slumped. 

Harry got out of the back of the car idling opposite, going round to the boot and getting out a leather holdall and a small grey duffle. He had a beanie pulled down low over his ears, his coat collar up, but Louis had spent a year learning every inch of him. 

He'd recognise Harry blindfold. 

"Hi," Harry said finally, coming over. The car was already half way down the street, and Harry didn’t look after it. "Can I come in?"

Louis nodded. He went back up the stairs, refusing to feel guilty for the state of the place, for the shabby wallpaper or the hundreds of old letters piled up or the unswept stairs. It was worse when he pushed open the door to his flat, and Humph wandered out from the bedroom; Louis wasn't having any of that. Humph was his cat and Harry wasn't taking him. He wasn't having him. 

Louis bundled Humph up in his arms, stepping back against the wall as Harry closed the door behind him. The hall was tiny enough at the best of times, but with the two of them there, it felt like the size of a matchbox. 

Harry looked rough as fuck. His skin was bad, his eyes bloodshot. There were shadows under his eyes and his hair looked greasy from underneath his hat. "Thanks," he said finally. "For letting me in."

Louis nodded. He kissed the top of Humph's head. He wasn't happy with Louis at the moment, hating to be picked up at the best of times, but this time Louis wasn't letting go. 

"Is that Sir Humphrey?" Harry asked hesitantly, holding one hand out. 

Louis backed into the wall, knocking a coat off the hook. "You're not having him," he said. "You can't just take him. He's mine. I've looked after him."

Harry dropped his hand. "I know," he said. "I wouldn't—he's yours."

"You can't have him."

"I don't…" he stopped. "He's your cat. I gave him to you."

"You took everything else," Louis said. 

Harry looked like he was about to cry. Louis didn't care. 

"Were those two boys worth it? Was your stupid fucking threesome worth all of this?"

"No." He sniffed, wiping his nose. "I'm in such a mess. Everything's gone wrong and I don't know how to fix any of it. I don't know who I am anymore."

Louis snorted. "I never knew who the fuck you were. It was all a giant fucking lie."

"It wasn't. I loved you."

"So much that you left me." Louis shook his head. "I take it you're staying."

"I don't need a bed. I'll go anywhere."

"Good," Louis said, "because there isn't one. How big do you think this place is? We're not all famous fucking pop stars. You can have the sofa." His sofa was a two-seater and it had come with the flat. It was probably a thousand years old. Harry was long enough that he could probably comfortably fit approximately a quarter of him on it. There was a savage sort of satisfaction in the thought of Harry trying to pretzel himself into Louis's horrible tiny sofa. He hugged Humph harder, and Humph mewled in protest. "It's through there. I'll get you a blanket. I've got to go to work in the morning so excuse me if I go the fuck to bed."

"Thanks," Harry said quietly, as Louis went into the bedroom and shut the door so that he could put Humph down. Humph wasn't going anywhere Harry was. He took one of the Primark fleece blankets off his bed and one of his pillows. He only had two and they were both a bit crap. He didn't bother changing the pillowcase. 

"Here," he said, coming back into the living room. Harry was standing in the middle of it, still shouldering both his bags. Louis refused to be embarrassed about where he lived. It was small and untidy and Louis owned nothing of value apart from his cat, and it was cold and damp and the curtains didn't properly fit. It was his fucking home and Harry could take that look off his face like he was judging him. "Stop fucking staring. We can't all be pop stars."

"It's really nice," Harry lied. 

Louis shook his head. "I'm too tired to figure out why you're here. If you take my cat, I'll fucking kill you."

"I won't take your cat. I just—I want to make things right."

"I think the best way to do that is for me to have less of you in my life, not more," Louis said. "For fuck's sake. Just go the fuck to sleep. You can stay here tomorrow if you want, but I'll be at work."

Harry just nodded. "Thank you," he said finally. "I don't deserve this."

"You're right," Louis said. "You don't."

~*~

He finally fell asleep to the sound of Harry crying in the living room. 

~*~

_do you have wifi?_

Louis sent back _no. its pay as you go and I haven't topped up. Make do with the telly ._

It was half way through the afternoon and Louis was about to flip. He'd slept so, so badly, hyper-aware that Harry was in the next room, thankful that Humph was curled up in the small of his back, forever his protector. 

He'd liked it less when Humph had demanded food at six in the morning, and even less when he'd had to shiver his way into the living room to find Harry asleep on his living room floor, having taken the cushions off the sofa and spread them out to make a bed. He'd still been in his coat, although he'd swapped his skinny jeans for tracksuit bottoms, and he was wrapped up in Louis's red blanket. He was on his back, one arm above his head, brow furrowed even in sleep. 

Louis had filled Humph's food bowl, shivering, and put the kettle on to make himself a cup of tea. 

Harry hadn't stirred. 

He'd managed to get through almost the entire day without having heard from Harry. He'd half managed to convince himself that it had never happened; Harry hadn't shown up in the middle of the night with no explanation and only half an apology. Even if he had, he wouldn't still be there when Louis got home from work. It was crazy to even think that he would. 

"Changed your mind about whether or not you'd sleep with Harry Styles yet?" Lisa asked when Louis got back from the coffee machine. She minimised her database window to show her desktop background – a new Harry picture now, a more recent one where Harry's hair was longer and his eyes a little tired. Louis refused to think about whether it was just a bad day or if he always looked like that now. 

"Would you?" Louis countered, ignoring the way his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was probably that reporter from _The Sun_ again, or one from the _Daily Mail_. Surely if they had enough for a story, they'd post it with or without his input? That was the only thing that gave him any hope at all. They might know his name, but they didn't have more. If they did, they wouldn't be waiting for a quote from Louis to top it all off; they'd just run with it: _Harry Styles' secret gay ex-boyfriend, the relationship he kept from the world._

"Course," Lisa said. "I mean, he's like, five years too young for me, but he's mature, right? He's got those big eyes. Although, it's not like I'm his type by the looks of things."

"I love a secret gay boy," Amanda agreed. "My mum always said they have well good manners."

Louis didn't thump his head off the table. "How good do you think my manners are?"

"So-so," Lisa said, meeting Amanda's eyes over Louis's shoulder. "How do you feel about a secret gay boy?"

"Completely neutral," Louis lied, and put his headphones back in. 

~*~

Louis got home to a mewling cat, a sheepish secret ex-boyfriend, and a very clean flat. Rhoda was outside again, but he'd ignored her completely and come straight inside.

"You tidied," Louis said instead of hello, discarding his coat on the back of the sofa and bundling up Humph for a protective hug. 

Humph meowed. 

"I didn't know what else to do," Harry said awkwardly. "I wanted to say thank you."

Louis nodded. The washing up was all done and put away, the counter cleaned and sparkling. The drying rack was up by the window, and there was a new load of washing drying on there, Louis's socks all neatly drying in rows. Each of the surfaces in the living room had been tidied and wiped down, Harry's bedding folded up on one of the two chairs by the little table in the corner. Even the floor looked like it had been hoovered, which was a bloody miracle as the hoover was so shit because of all the cat hair that it was essentially like sawing at the carpet with a rake. It was an exercise in futility anyway because Humph was a little shit and shed approximately eleven tons of cat fur a day. The little table Louis occasionally ate off was all cleaned up too, his dirty cups and plates all gone, all of his papers piled up neatly.

Louis's heart stuttered to a shameful, terrified stop. "Harry."

"I didn't look," Harry said quickly. "I didn't mean to, anyway."

Unpaid bills. Final demands for his gas and electric bills. A council tax demand. Louis knew what papers had been lying around. Credit card bills and overdraft reminders and a water payment schedule and TV licence and an increase in rent reminder. Probably the letter from ages ago cutting off his internet. He still owed them money. At some point there was a pretty good chance the bailiffs would call.

"It's not what it looks like. I'm okay."

"I know," Harry said, which might have been the biggest lie Harry had told in the last few days, and that was saying something. He looked sad. 

"I'm doing just fine," Louis went on, speaking quicker now, and going red. "I can look after myself. It's just a bad patch. It's nothing."

"I know," Harry said again. 

Louis hugged his cat. "Don't be sorry for me," he said, and if he sounded choked up then it wasn't his fault. "Don't be fucking sorry for me."

"Never," Harry said, and Louis nodded quickly, burying his face in Humph's fur. 

"I'm trying," Louis said finally. Harry was leaning against the back of the sofa. 

"Course you are," Harry agreed, and Louis wanted to give in. He wanted to stop fighting, to stop pretending he was okay, to stop pretending that he could manage any part of his life when he so clearly couldn't. 

Louis put his nose in the air instead. "Are you staying tonight?"

"If you'll have me," Harry said after a minute. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

"You don't have here, either," Louis said. "You definitely don't have me."

"I know," Harry said. "You think I don't know I've lost you for good?"

Sometimes Louis's chest felt like it was shrinking in on itself, and taking his lungs with it. "I thought we could have beans on toast," he said instead, getting a tin of value beans and a loaf of reduced bread out of his rucksack. He followed it up with some milk and a couple of bananas. "I've got custard powder in the cupboard. Thought we could have bananas and custard for afters."

Harry's face crumpled. He turned around quickly, pretending to straighten up the little coffee table. 

Louis looked the other way. "All right?" he said, after a minute. He put the tin of beans in a pan on the cooker.

"No," Harry said, voice choked. "But then, neither are you."

Louis just nodded. "No," he said softly. He opened the loaf of bread and put two pieces in the toaster. "We're really, really not."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tonight I googled pictures of bananas and custard because it's comforting and I'd like some. Pictures are a poor substitution for actual, in real life bananas and custard. I have neither bananas nor custard. It is a cruel world in which we live.

"Why'd you let me stay?" Harry asked later, poking his spoon around his bowl of custard and chopped up banana. "Why did you let me in?"

Louis shrugged. "It was the middle of the night," he said, which wasn't the reason. He pulled his knee up to his chest. "I don't know, all right? I'm an idiot. Why did you come?"

Harry looked down at his knees. "I'm on my own," he said softly. "I'm all by myself and I just didn't want to be alone any more."

"So you drove half way up the country in the middle of the night to try and stay with someone who hates you."

"At least you feel something. At least you notice me."

"You're a fucking pop star, dickhead," Louis said. His chest hurt. "Everyone notices you."

"Yeah," Harry said, and he put his bowl down on the arm of the sofa. "That's just what it's like."

"I'm not feeling sorry for you because you're famous," Louis said. "You can fuck right off."

"Everyone always says that. Like I've got to be lying or something."

Louis didn't want to feel sorry for him. "What about your mates? All those friends you left me for, what about them? You were having fucking threesomes, that's not nobody noticing you. That's, like, double the amount of noticing that normal people get."

Harry just shrugged. "We should watch something on TV."

"What's your problem?"

"Nothing," Harry said. 

Louis rolled his eyes and reached for the remote. One of the buttons was a bit stuck down with strawberry jam and he'd lost the casing off the back where the batteries were kept, so it was a bit of a juggling exercise trying to make it work, but the screen fizzled into life eventually. Midsomer Murders was on, and they'd missed the beginning. Louis didn't bother changing the channel even though he really couldn't be bothered with watching it. 

"I don't know who I am any more," Harry said finally, like that was supposed to be enough.

"Who the fuck does?" Louis couldn't imagine knowing who he was. It was too hard just holding everything together. He was going to get a GCSE in fucking up his life, in making stupid life choices and letting down the people he loved. With that and a job he just had to get through every day, and standing in the supermarket just trying to make ends meet, there was nothing really left at the end to try and shape into someone he liked and wanted to spend time with. 

"I don't know." Harry picked his custard up again. "Turn the volume up, will you?"

There was such a lot to say. Oceans of things, whole seas of conversations and questions that they needed to ask if they wanted to stay sitting next to each other on the sofa. Maybe if they talked about it just a bit, some of the hurt and the anger and the pain inside of him would disappear. Maybe it would start to hurt less, and he could get the fuck on with his life. 

He turned the volume up instead, and let Humph wander into his lap and dig his claws into Louis's thighs. 

~*~

Harry had been crying for ages. Louis tried putting his pillow over his head, the duvet pulled up against the cold, but even muffled and in the next room, he couldn't block it out entirely. It was two in the morning, and freezing cold, and Louis had to go to work in the morning. 

He got out of bed in the end, wrapping himself in his second Primark fleece, the one he hadn't given to Harry, and slipped out of the bedroom and into the living room. Harry was sitting on the sofa cushions he'd laid out on the floor, knees up to his chest, wrapped in his coat and the blanket, head between his knees. He sounded so fucking desolate it hurt Louis's chest. 

Louis sat down next to him, his heart pounding. "Shhhh," he said softly, wrapping his arms around Harry's shoulders. "Don't cry."

Harry made a desperate, breathless kind of a noise. He buried his face in Louis's shoulder, and grabbed at Louis's arm, fingers digging in. "I'm so sorry," he managed. "I'm so, so sorry."

"It's okay," Louis lied, because nothing was okay, and Louis was halfway to losing everything, including his heart. He'd never really got that back after the first time, though. It was taking everything in him to wrestle it somewhere out of harm's way. "It's okay. You don't have to cry any more."

"I've messed everything up," Harry told him. His voice was thick and choked. "I've let everyone down and I hate who I am."

"Shhh," Louis said. "You haven't. It's okay. It'll be okay." He stroked Harry's back. When he looked up at Louis, he looked exhausted and older than he should have done. He'd been crying for so long his face was red and his eyes swollen. "It's all going to be okay, I promise."

"Don't hate me," Harry begged, hiding his face again. "Please stop hating me. I can't bear it."

Louis refused to let himself cry. He tilted his chin up instead, blinking his tears away. "You'll be just fine," he said, and he didn't mean for his voice to catch, but it did anyway. 

"I love you," Harry told him. "I always, always loved you."

Louis squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't. He just couldn't. "It'll be okay," he said again, and if he kissed the top of Harry's head the way he usually kissed Humph's, then maybe neither of them would remember in the morning. "You'll be just fine."

"You don't know that."

"No," Louis agreed. He rubbed his hand over Harry's shoulder. "I don't."

Harry was probably leaving snot all over Louis's hoodie. Maybe when Harry left and Louis was one step closer to giving in and applying for a payday loan to tide him over, he'd sell the hoodie on eBay. Genuine Harry Styles snot. 

That probably contravened all of the points on the non-disclosure agreement. Maybe not. 

"You think you can sleep now?" Louis asked finally, when Harry's ragged breathing and settled into something more regular. There was a half-finished roll of loo paper on the floor by the makeshift bed. Louis tried not to think about how he couldn't afford to replace things that were being used twice as fast as normal. Every month was worse than the one before. 

Harry awkwardly pulled away, reaching for a bit of loo roll to wipe his eyes with. 

"Sorry," he said. 

"Don't be. It's fine. I just—" he paused. "You'll be all right, you know."

Harry didn't look like he believed him. Louis didn't believe it either. He kept hearing _I love you. I always, always loved you_ over and over in his head on a loop. Harry hadn't, though. He hadn’t loved Louis enough, and Louis had loved enough for the both of them. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid obsessed Louis, who hadn't seen the end coming until it was way too late and he'd been waiting with his packed suitcase for a holiday that wasn't ever going to happen. Who hadn't realised his boyfriend was on a plane to the other side of the world until long after it had taken off. Stupid, co-dependent, obsessive Louis. 

_I always, always loved you_. 

"Get some sleep," he said, stumbling awkwardly to his feet. "You need it, if you're going to sort any of this shit out."

"Yeah," Harry sniffed, wiping his eyes again. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I know you've got work."

"Yeah," Louis said. He nodded, swallowing. "Night, then."

Back in bed again a couple of minutes later, Humph settled up in the small of his back, Louis shut his eyes and tried to sleep. 

He was so tired of being this scared all the time. He was so tired of being poor, and being stupid, and of having loved someone who'd let him down so badly. He was tired of letting people he loved down, and of never, ever having any money to do anything, and of being bored of fucking everything because all he had to do was watch the telly and go and fuck around in the library because there was internet and free heating. He was so tired of waiting for it all to catch up with him, the unpaid bills and the non-disclosure and the mess he'd made of every bit of his life. 

He was so tired of still loving Harry Styles so much his chest ached with it. 

He rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. Stupid, obsessive Louis Tomlinson, who couldn't let a bad thing die. 

The bedroom door opened slowly, and Harry stood awkwardly in the doorway, his coat discarded and his blanket clutched in his arms. 

"What do you want?" Louis asked. 

"Can I sleep in here? With you?" He sounded hesitant and tired and very, very scared. 

Louis's eyes were wet. He willed himself not to give into tears. One of these days he'd be less fucking exhausted and more equipped to deal. 

"Louis?"

"All right," Louis said finally, and Harry let out a ragged breath.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today I didn't google "do ducks have corkscrew penises" because someone at work did it for me.

Harry ended up curled up at the other side of the bed with hardly any covers, because Louis spent most nights so cold that the only way to deal with it was to pretend to be a burrito in his duvet. His mum had always called him her snug little bug in a rug when he rolled himself up in his covers. He'd always done it. It didn't always make him warm, but he at least tried. 

Humph took up the majority of the rest of the bed like the king that he was. 

Neither he nor Harry said anything, but neither of them were going to get to sleep any time soon. 

Louis stared up at the ceiling. "Fuck," he said finally, switching his lamp on. "Come on. Let's just at least try and be warm. Humph, baby, wake the fuck up."

Humph meowed, stretching out his paws, his little grumpy face grumpily frowning in Louis's direction. 

"You can sleep in a minute," he told Humph, picking him up and depositing him on the floor. Humph meowed again, his distaste for being woken up clear. "Right then."

Harry had rolled over, eyes still red, cheeks tear-stained. 

It wasn't Louis's fault that sadness settled heavy like snowfall across his chest. "Go and wash your face," he said. "I'll make the bed whilst you're gone."

"Lou—" 

"Wash your face," Louis said, refusing to look at Harry. He busied himself standing up and straightening his pillow, ducking into the living room to get Harry's pillow from his make shift bed, then back into the bedroom to make the bed. He never made the bed – what was the point, generally – but he straightened the duvet out anyway, laying his fleecy blanket over his side, and Harry's over his side, overlapping in the middle where Humph would probably settle. 

"What are we doing?" Harry asked, coming back in. Bits of his hair were wet, but the tear stains looked marginally less obvious. 

"Sleeping," Louis said, and he pulled back the covers on his side of the bed. "Get in."

Harry obediently went round to the other side of the bed, and climbed in. He settled on his back, and Louis switched the light off. 

"We need to talk, you know," Harry said finally. 

"We don't," Louis said, but then he relented. "And if we do, we're not doing it in the middle of the fucking night." He rolled onto his side, and he heard the familiar _pad pad pad_ of Humph slipping back into the room and deciding to launch himself at the bed. 

Harry rolled over, taking some of the covers with him, and Louis tried to close his eyes and go to sleep. 

He was almost asleep when Harry said softly, "I wish you didn't hate me."

Louis didn't open his eyes. "I wish you hadn't left me. But you did."

Harry didn't say anything to that. 

~*~

Getting ready for work with a meddlesome cat, not enough sleep, and what might have been ice on the inside of the living room window was frankly awful. Even Harry stumbling into the kitchen and almost braining himself tripping over the cat wasn't enough to cheer him up; even Harry making him a cup of tea and a piece of toast as Louis tried to get his shit in order enough that he might make his bus wasn't enough to make the morning anything nearing okay. 

"I thought I could get us a takeaway tonight," Harry said quietly, when Louis was trying to lace up his shoes. "My treat. Say thanks for putting me up."

"Okay," Louis said, wrapping his scarf around his neck and shoving his keys in the pocket of his rucksack. "Fine."

"And I've used all your cleaning stuff and eaten your food, so… I could do a supermarket order and replace that? If you don't mind?"

"I'm not a fucking charity case," Louis snapped, pulling on his hat. "I don't need you to replace a loaf of bread and some kitchen cleaner."

"I was just—" Harry stopped. "All right. If you don't want me to."

Louis couldn't afford to replace anything that Harry ran out, and he couldn't afford to buy reduced bread and crap microwave meals for them both. "All right, fine. Just don't make a big fucking deal of it, all right? I don't need your charity."

Harry was wrapped in his hoodie and his tracksuit bottoms and two pairs of socks. He still looked cold. Louis didn't want to leave him in a freezing flat all day with no option to put the heating on. 

He buttoned his coat up and grabbed his bag. "Don't fucking steal my cat."

"I wouldn't," Harry said, but Louis was late for the bus. 

He didn't look back. 

~*~

Work was shit and long and boring and Lisa and Amanda still thought they knew everything about him and Harry Styles. Lisa kept him up to date with some of the articles, reading out, _a source close to Harry said "Harry's so relieved that he can finally be himself. It's taken him a long time to build up the courage to tell his fans he was gay because he didn't want them to think differently of him, but coming out has been a big relief for him."_

Louis wasn't entirely sure that sobbing helplessly in the middle of the night counted as 'a big relief', but he wasn't Harry's PR team either. He never had particularly liked the sound of them, only coming into actual contact with them when Meghan had turned up with the lawyers and the non-disclosure paperwork, but whatever story they were spinning about Harry this time, Louis suspected Harry had nothing to do with it. 

After lunch he texted Harry, _do your management team and pr and whatever all know where you are and who you're with? ?_

Harry's reply came a lot later, and just said, _no_. 

~*~

He got in late that night because there was a traffic jam and he'd missed the bus and it was raining. Rhoda wasn't waiting for him outside any more, which he liked, but there were four messages on his phone, which he didn't. 

He dripped all over the hall like a wet dog. Even Humph wouldn't come near him. Humph hated water. 

"Are you AWOL?" he asked, when Harry came out to say hi. Louis was shedding damp clothes all over the floor. "Does anyone know where you are?"

"You do," Harry said finally. "Do you want me to make you some tea?"

"What about your family?" Louis persisted. "I haven't heard your mum ringing you."

"I haven't heard your mum ringing you, either. She was always ringing you before."

Louis shrugged. "We're not talking about me."

"Yeah, well," Harry said. "I told you I'd messed everything up. I told you I didn't have anyone."

Louis was damp and cold and shivering. He needed a hot shower, but the water only ran to gently over-warm at the best of times. "That didn't include your mum, though, right? Or your sister. What was her name?" He remembered her name. He'd just never met her. He'd never met anyone. Louis Tomlinson, dirty little secret. He wouldn't forget that feeling in a hurry. He just also couldn't forget the feeling that went with it, the one he got whenever Harry had looked at him or kissed him or told him that he loved him. He couldn't forget the way he'd been loved if he was remembering how much being a secret had hurt. 

"Gemma," Harry said, running his finger nail over the gash in the door frame. "Her name's Gemma."

Louis tried to unknot his shoelaces with cold, damp fingers. They always felt like school shoes, these cheap and nasty black lace ups he had to wear to work. "Haz—"

"I didn't go home for Christmas," Harry said, cutting him off. "I was supposed to, and I just… didn't."

"What did you do instead?"

Harry shrugged. "Got drunk. Went out. They found out I wasn't coming home from pictures in the paper of me falling out of a club. Gemma told me not to come home until I stopped making such a mess of everything and making Mum cry."

"Because you didn't come home once?"

"No," Harry said. "Because I just keep fucking things up. You weren't the only person I lost. You weren't the only person I left."

It made Louis's chest ache. "What the fuck have you been doing?"

Harry's shoulder twitched. "Losing everything," he said softly. "That's what I've been doing. I'll make you some tea. You get out of those wet clothes."

Louis nodded, going to get changed out of his work clothes and into the clothes he was going to sleep in later, thick tracksuit bottoms and warm, fluffy socks and a huge hoodie. He tried to put his work clothes over the radiator because he didn't have enough of a wardrobe to not wear them again before he put another load of washing on.

The problem was that seeing Harry's palpable, desperate loneliness close up hurt. It hurt to see reflected on Harry's face what Louis felt but tried so hard to hide. He'd never been alone like this before, and it wasn't that he didn't have great mates in Niall and Liam; not that they'd even known each other that long, but they were properly growing into best mates. It was being alone against the world, disconnected from the people that loved him hardest, outside of the world that everyone else thought normal. Poor and lying and cold and desperately in debt and sometimes hungry and so fucking alone that sometimes it threatened to consume him from the inside out, like it was slowly eating away at his soul and one day he'd look down and there'd be nothing left of him, just a hole where his life used to be. 

"Harry," he said, going out into the hall. "Haz."

The kettle was starting to boil; Louis could hear it through the closed door. It sounded like a rocket taking off. He pushed open the door to find Harry standing by the stove, two mugs out, the remains of the milk already lined up. 

"Harry."

Harry jumped. He'd clearly been in a world of his own. "What?"

Louis's hand twitched. He longed to—what, reach for him? He swallowed. "It's okay," he said finally. "It's going to be okay."

"Is it?" Harry asked. "Because it doesn't feel like it."

"You'll get it all back. Everything you loved about that life. Rich and famous and whatever. Your mum and Gemma."

Harry shook his head. "I don't want that life back. I hated that life. I hated everything about it."

"Haz—"

"I love you," he said, "and I lost you because I was so caught up in being whatever the fuck I was being. Famous. It's not real. It's just this — it's this _thing_. It's a word. People say _he's famous_ but they say it where they used to say he's kind or he's nice or he's good with animals. You lose all of that. It all goes and it's just famous. He's famous. I'm famous. I got so caught up in it I lost everyone. It doesn't mean anything. I don't mean anything."

It made Louis want to sit down on the floor and not get up again, this weight in his chest that was all Harry. "You do."

"What, though? What the fuck do I mean? I'm a fucking story in a newspaper. I'm a sordid gay threesome. I'm the seedy lies and the bad work ethic and the guy who made all those girls cry because I really like dick. That doesn't exist in the real world. It's like all the rest of me's gone and all that's left are the bits I don't like, the bits that can sell papers and stories and hurt the people I love. I keep thinking about it, going over and over and over it in my head, but all I do is hurt people. That's all I am."

"What do you want to be instead?" Louis asked finally, when it was almost too much to bear. 

Harry looked impossibly, desperately tired. "Okay," he said finally. "I want to be okay."

"Apart from that."

"Happy."

Louis reached past him for the kettle, pouring water onto their tea bags. He stood next to Harry at the counter, and waited for their tea to brew. 

"I'm sorry," Harry said softly. "I'm so sorry for dragging you into this."

"You're not nothing. You mean something. You mean something to me."

Harry nodded, and Louis didn't mean to lean in and kiss him, but he did it anyway, lips pressed to the corner of Harry's mouth. 

"Louis—"

"Shush," Louis said, and closed his eyes.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today there was a hot plasterer in my house all day, making me a new kitchen wall (renting a damp flat is the BEST, guys, it's the BEST), and in between building the wall, he made me a cup of tea, and he put sugar in it because he clearly didn't realise that that was a travesty. I drank it anyway because I'm British and tea is my lifeblood, but then later on he offered to make me another cup of tea, and he asked me how my first cup was, and even though I HATE SUGAR IN TEA I told him my tea was perfect and just right. So that was a thing that happened.

Louis ordered prawn crackers, sticky spare ribs, beef in black bean sauce, and Singapore noodles for his tea. He got a bottle of Coke, too, the big kind, and Harry didn't say a word as it hit £15 on his Just Eat app total without Harry even picking anything. He handed the phone back and Harry concentrated on his screen, scrolling up and down before tapping through to the pay screen. 

Louis didn't let himself ask _you sure you don't want me to pay half?_ He was so fucking sick of crap, cheap food. He hadn't let himself have a takeaway in ages, only when he was with Niall and Liam and saying no would have let on just how bad his money situation was. Even then, he'd persuade them to go to the chippy on the corner; stretching to chips or a sausage and chips was better than having to make the minimum to get free delivery, or even worse, split the bill three ways because it was easier that way. He was so ashamed of how little money he had. 

He had a text on his phone from Niall asking if he wanted to go to the pub tomorrow night. He hadn't replied. 

"What are you getting?"

"King prawns with spring onion and ginger," Harry said. "Can I share your prawn crackers, or do you want me to get another bag?"

"Get two," Louis said, stroking Humph, who was taking up the arm of the sofa because he couldn't ever bear to miss anything. "Anything left over we can eat tomorrow."

"Deal," Harry said. "There, done. I, uh, got a Tesco order earlier too. It's coming tomorrow night. They didn't have any delivery slots left for tonight, and it's not like I can go to the door."

Louis glanced at him. "I was going to go to the pub tomorrow night. See my mates."

"Oh. It doesn't matter, then. I'll see if I can rearrange."

"What slot did you pick?"

"Eight until ten, I think. I'll see if I can change it."

"No. It's okay. I'll come home for eight. I should only have one anyway." He didn't look at the pile of bills on the table. He had made a huge fucking deal of not looking at them ever since Harry had piled them up there; knowing they were there didn't make it magically any easier to pay any of them. 

He was on a downward slope and he couldn't fucking figure out how to stop. 

"Thanks for getting the food," he said finally. "You didn't have to."

"Least I could do," Harry said, and if he sounded a little awkward then at least that made two of them. "You're putting me up, aren't you?"

"Yeah. About that."

Harry stilled. "Do you want me to go?"

Louis should say yes. He really, really should say yes. "It's fine. I'm not chucking you out. I just… do you think we should talk?"

"You never wanted to talk."

Louis pulled his knee up to his chest. They were both on his little sofa, the two of them leaning in towards each other because the sofa was dying in a slow and painful fashion and was slowly collapsing in the middle. "I always wanted to talk," he said finally. "I just never wanted to hear what you had to say about us. I knew—I knew I was the first expendable thing in your life. I knew it even before you proved it. Not talking was the only way I had of not pushing you to it even faster."

Harry's face fell. "Lou."

"Don't look like that. It was true. I was your dirty little secret. Of course you were going to get rid of me first. I was just the fucking idiot who tried to tell myself it was different." He shrugged. "I tried so hard to keep you, you know? I know you thought I was obsessive and weird or whatever. That's what you said, isn't it? I loved you too much. But I just… wanted as much of you as I could get before you left. I should have known I was pushing you away faster, that I was freaking you out."

"You didn't love me too much," Harry said. "I said that because I loved you too much. I said that because you terrified me. What I felt about you—" he stopped. "I thought I wanted to be famous. I got it all mixed up. What I wanted to do was perform. I wanted to make music. It's not about being famous. I just didn’t know that it wasn't the same thing. You wanted so much from me. You wanted so much of me, and I couldn't give it to you."

Shame settled heavy against Louis's skin. He'd always known he was too much. He'd always been the intense boyfriend, the one who called too much and made too many gestures and liked to text. He'd be an intense friend too, if it wasn't for the fact that he was limited by not being able to afford to top up his phone. "I'm sorry. I know I'm too much."

"No. I mean—no. This isn't. It wasn't. What you wanted from me was totally fine. You wanted a boyfriend and I was so scared of being that. I was so scared of what that meant. I thought I'd lose the rest of it. I thought the rest of it was more important. I got it so wrong, and I lost you. I lost all the stuff that mattered to me the most, and it's my own fault, and I deserved it."

Louis didn't say anything to that. He tucked his chin over his knee instead. "I didn't want to go out with you because you were famous, you know. I always thought you thought I wanted to be the boyfriend of a celebrity and I was pushing for that. I wasn't ever. My mum always talked about home being more than just a place, like it's the people in it too. She always said you took this sense of it with you, and I thought she was talking bollocks except that when you went, it felt like part of me had been ripped away, you know? I was so fucking stupid, Haz. I used to think about you and me getting older and being together and having this place that was just ours. I thought about, like, parties. Having parties. My sisters coming to stay." He stopped. "I've got a little brother now. And another little sister. My mum had twins."

"Lou—"

"I'm too scared to go home," Louis said, cutting him off. "I'm too scared to talk to my mum in case she sees how much of a mess I've made of everything. She's got a family that's not fucked up, and then she's got me, and I owe her so much money for just getting me to fucking London, you know? I can't go home now when I can't even afford to get there without her help. If she saw—" his voice caught. "If she came here and saw my fucking fridge, or had to put up with not putting the heating on like you're having to do, she'd be so upset. I can't—I can't do that to her, you know? And I miss her so much. I broke up with you and I couldn't even go to her then because I never fucking told her. All that time she knew I was seeing someone and I never told her it was you. She asked and she asked, and I never said, and then she finally stopped asking and I knew I'd lost her."

"You haven't lost her."

"Haven't I?" Louis asked, and his voice sounded wet. He was so close to crying, and he didn't want to break down over how lonely and poor and fucked up he was to Harry. He didn't want anyone to know, but he really, really didn't want Harry to know. "Because I feel like I can't find her, and she sure as fuck can't find me."

"You're not alone," Harry said fiercely, and he grabbed Louis's hand. Half an hour ago they'd been making tea and Louis had kissed him, and Harry had kissed him back, and they'd both looked the other way and not touched since. "It might feel like you are, but you're not. You're not, I swear."

"I didn't mean to kiss you," Louis said, instead of what he meant to say. "I just couldn't, like…" he stopped. "I was in the other room and I am so alone, like, almost all the time. I've never in my whole life been this alone. I'm with other people and I still feel like I'm by myself, and I hate that. I hate it, but, like, you're here and I haven't felt like that. I've felt such a lot of other stuff, and I've hated you, but, fuck, for one minute I wanted to feel like I was here."

"You are here," Harry said. His hand was still in Louis's. "I promise you, you're here. Humph knows you're here. You look after him every single day."

"You can't have him," Louis said, trying not to sound choked up. "He's mine."

"I know."

"He's my cat and you can't take him when you go."

"I swear. I swear I'm not taking him."

"I didn't have anything left and I had him. You'd gone and there was nothing else left. He's not yours to take." He didn't mean to cry. He was just so tired, and so stressed out, and so fucking alone. 

Harry let go of his hand, and cupped Louis's face. "I swear to god," he said. "Humph is yours. Babe, he's yours and I know how much he means to you, and I'd never take him."

"You bought him, though."

"For you. I bought him for you."

"He's the only thing I've got."

"Don't cry," Harry said softly. "Please don't cry, baby. I'm going to help you get this all sorted, I promise."

"I don't need your charity." He was snotty and revolting and Harry was still cupping his face. Tears kept sneaking down his cheeks. 

"I know. You've been so strong," Harry told him. "Doing this all by yourself."

"Please don't," Louis said. His chest felt so tight it might explode. This was the stuff he kept locked down low. He couldn't let it out now. If he started, he might never stop. 

"So fucking strong," Harry said, leaning in. He kissed Louis's cheek, then his other cheek, his jaw, his eyebrow, his forehead. 

Louis's hands were shaking. 

"Harry—"

"Shush," Harry told him. "Tonight you're not alone, all right? I swear. Tonight you don't have to carry all of this by yourself."

Louis let out a ragged breath, and Harry pressed his mouth to Louis's. It felt like a promise, but Louis didn't trust Harry's promises. He couldn't let himself. He'd only end up hurt. 

"You're not alone," Harry said again, breath warm against Louis's mouth, and Louis trembled. 

"I am," he said, but Harry didn't let go, and Louis didn't push him away, and they stayed where they were, waiting for their food to arrive.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's google searches: "tiger cat food flavours" (again) "[my local] chinese takeaway menu" "can pigeons fall off buildings" "because I think that one on the building opposite just did" "cats with mohawks" "persian cats with mohawks" "cats that look like dinosaurs" "persian cats are better than you" and "cats that don't want you to be sad". Here are some grey and white fluffballs: [exhibit A](http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~dwhite/Reggie/DSCF0062.JPG), [exhibit B](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/77/a4/41/77a441bc16ff00b6f2fac08cc2e7bef4.jpg), and [exhibit C](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/60/b0/19/60b019efec5c15d1a572100dcaec72f4.jpg). You're welcome.

They ended up putting _17 Again_ on whilst they waited for their Chinese to arrive, because Louis had seen the DVD in the Cancer Research shop for a quid last month, then never got round to watching it. 

"What's it about?" Harry asked, reading the back of the DVD case as Louis got the two fleece blankets from the bedroom. It was fucking freezing, but he wasn't mentioning he couldn't afford the heating on if Harry wasn't. " _If you somehow had the chance, would you do your life over?_ Seems appropriate."

"It's Zac Efron, and he looks really fucking hot on the box," Louis said, blowing his nose on a piece of loo roll and shoving it into the overflowing bin liner by the kitchen door. "Remind me to take the bin out in the morning."

There was a momentary pause. "All right," Harry said. He shifted so that he was looking over the back of the sofa to where Louis was grabbing a couple of plates and some forks for their food. Anything rather than dealing with the humiliation of crying all over Harry fucking Styles. "You all right?"

"Totally," he lied, opening the cupboard door by Humph's food bowl. "Humph, baby, do you want chicken and turkey in gravy, or… lamb in gravy? Another spectacular choice from the world of Tiger cat food, I think you'll agree, Humph." Humph jumped off the arm of the sofa and wandered over, looking like he didn't give a shit. He did give any number of shits though, which is why Louis's cupboards only ever had tinned food in gravy instead of jelly, because Humph was picky. Given his own way, he might be picky about brands as well, but he got what was cheapest in Asda, because Louis was dirt fucking poor and sick of it. "Chicken and turkey it is, love."

Humph meowed. 

"Yes, Louis agreed, getting a clean cat bowl out of the cupboard so he could wash the dirty one up. "I know. You're a very spoiled kitten, aren't you?" There wasn't much that was kitten-like about Humph any more, but he'd always be Louis's baby. He refilled his water bowl first and then spooned out half of the tin into the bowl and put it down on the tray. "Dig in, kit."

"Louis. Are you really okay?"

Louis stood up, wiping his hands on his thighs. He went to rinse his hands under the tap. "Nothing's changed," he said. "I'm the same person I was an hour ago, or last week, or last year when you left me. I did it by myself then, and I can do it by myself now. I don't need someone to fix me. I never did."

"I know," Harry said. "It doesn't… it doesn't mean you have to be alone to do it."

Louis's shoulders slumped. "You're going to go. You're going to piss off back to your old life and I'm going to be here by myself, and nothing's going to have changed from last time."

"I'm going to go back. I have to go back at some point. I know that. I just don't want it to be like last time. I want to be better. I want to do better."

"You don’t need me for either of those things."

"Yeah," Harry said. "I do."

Louis gathered up the plates and the forks and brought them over to the rickety old coffee table. He wished he had beer, or some Jack Daniels left for the Coke they'd ordered with their takeaway, but he didn't. He had a Monster's Inc. plastic cup he'd had for donkey's years, that had made it to London and back again when most of Louis hadn't, and a Minions one from the pound shop from when Liam came over last year and Louis hadn't wanted to be the guy with just one cup to put water in. "Minions or Monster's Inc.?"

"Sully and Mike Wasowski, please. Lou. Sit down."

"I'm embarrassed," Louis said, as Harry tugged on his sleeve and Louis wouldn't look at him and wouldn't sit down. "You're rich and famous and you've got a career, and I can't afford to put the fucking heating on. It's fucking freezing, Harry, and you're staying here and I can't even make you warm enough."

"I'm fine," Harry said. "Sit down. There's blankets now."

"The food will be here in a minute."

"Then you can get up in a minute." Harry tugged at his sleeve. "Come on. Just sit down and get warm for a minute."

Louis took the longest time to nod his _yes_. He sat down and Harry handed him one of the blankets, and he pulled it over himself, right up to his shoulders. His hands felt like ice. "I'm sorry," he said finally, as Harry pressed play on the DVD. "For crying. It just got on top of me for a minute."

"You're not alone," Harry said. "I swear to god, you're not alone."

Louis looked away. "Neither are you."

"Just have to keep reminding each other, then, won't we?"

~*~

The food was so fucking good, and Louis was so hungry that he devoured more of it than he thought he would, managing most of the ribs, two thirds of the noodles, and half of his beef before sitting back on the sofa, hand to his stomach, and groaned. 

"Good, huh?" Harry asked. He'd finished his prawns, but not his chow mein. 

"Amazing," Louis said. "I think I'm, like, one hundred per cent takeaway right now. They could cut me open and instead of a brain I'd just have Singapore noodles."

"Wouldn't they find that anyway, though?"

Louis elbowed him. "Oi." He settled back, pulling the blanket up and over him again. "Oh my god, I'm so full."

"I'm more full," Harry complained, patting his belly. He wrapped himself in the blanket again, half of his attention on Zac Efron on the telly. "I met him, you know."

"Don't tell me that." Louis rested his head on Harry's shoulder. Humph jumped up off the floor and curled up in Louis's lap now that his plate was gone; Louis loved his cat, but he wasn't sure that he loved him quite as much as normal when it came to Humph nudging Louis's tummy when it was this full. "You'll ruin the mystique. In my head he's just like he is in this."

"Good with balls?"

"He's always good with balls. I don't know. Hot, funny, nice. I kind of like to imagine he'd be totally up for giving me a blow job, too."

"You always did love a good blow job."

Louis flinched. "Yeah," he said. "I did."

"Sorry."

"Don’t be, it's the truth." He let out a breath, and shifted away so that he wasn't resting his cheek on Harry's shoulder anymore. "If you're really AWOL, how come your phone isn't ringing off the hook? Are you on Do Not Disturb, or what?"

Harry twitched. 

"Haz…"

Harry reached down the side of the sofa and came out with his shoulder bag, and the his wallet. Opening it up, he fumbled about in the money pocket until he came out with a tiny slither of torn magazine paper; unwrapping that, he showed Louis a sim card. 

"What the fuck's that?"

"My sim card," Harry said. 

"But you've got, like, 3G on your phone now, we just ordered food on it. How are you doing that without a sim?"

Harry shrugged. "I got a new number a couple of weeks ago. I don't know, maybe I was thinking about jacking it all in then. I just wanted to turn off the world for a bit, start again with just the people I wanted."

"You've been texting me from your old number."

"Felt stupid about it."

"So, like, every time you text me back, you're having to swap your sim card over first. What the fuck are you doing that for?"

"I don't know. Scared you wouldn't text me anymore or something."

"Christ," Louis said. "You're such a fucking idiot. Are you dealing with any of your other messages or anything?"

Harry shook his head. 

"And who has your new number?"

"No one, yet."

"Fucking hell," Louis said. "You've dropped off the face of the planet. Have you spoken to your mum? Or Gemma?"

"They don't want me at home."

"Babe," Louis said softly, and he wished he wasn't about to explode from all the food. He'd properly stuffed himself, which was an excellent life choice except if there was any kind of serious discussion to be had. "They do want you."

Harry's brow furrowed. "What if they don't, though? You said you're scared of talking to your mum. I'm scared of talking to mine. I just didn't go home for Christmas. Who does that?"

"Someone in the middle of going through something," Louis said. "Did you ever tell them you were gay?"

Harry didn't answer for the longest time. "No," he said finally. "I didn't."

"Christ."

"They would have pushed me to be myself," Harry said. "They always have done. I hope they would have been supportive. They probably would have been. You know, it's so weird. Sometimes I go past shop windows and they've got these really weird shirts in the window, stupid flowers and weird patterns and stuff, and I've never worn anything like that in my life, but part of me wants to. Part of me wants to go in and buy these stupid silk shirts I'm never going to wear, because I want them. I think Gemma would go in the shop with me, you know? She might make fun of me, but she'd go in the shop with me. Tell me to buy them, probably. I never told them I was gay because I don't think I was ready to be myself. I wasn't ready when I was with you."

That hurt. "You said you loved me."

"I did. I do. You ever been so scared of something because it could turn your entire life upside down?"

"Yes," Louis said, turning the volume down on the TV, his heart pounding. "You."

Harry reached for the remote. He pressed pause, and burrowed down under the blanket. "I couldn't tell you I didn't know how to be gay."

"I don't get this. You were gay. You were having sex with me. You told me you loved me. Which bit was the bit you didn't know how to do?"

Harry blinked at him. "Fit you into my life. Make it real."

"Oh," Louis said. "Right."

"I told you I didn't know who I was anymore," Harry said finally, a little hesitant. "I meant, like, I don't know how to not be gay on the inside, and I don't know how to be gay on the outside. I don't know how to tell people that they don't know who I am, that I've lied to them."

"It's not going to change everything about you, though. It's just going to change who they think you go to bed with."

"You should meet my friend, Nick," Harry said. "He's on the radio. Grimmy?"

"I know who he is," Louis said carefully. Harry had left him to go to Miami with Alexa Chung and her friends; Nick was a part of that crowd, although pictures of the two of them hanging out hadn't started to surface until a few months later. "I do listen to the radio, you know."

"Sorry. I think you'd like him. He's funny and stuff. He likes me. He took me under his wing a bit. There are about fifteen messages from him on my other phone. God knows what he thinks."

"You should tell him you're not dead."

"I should tell him I'm gay," he said. "All these months I've known that he's gay, and that maybe, like, he might be able to talk about some of this stuff with me. Being out, and people knowing who you are. Except he had to find out I liked shagging blokes from _The Sun_ , and from a picture of me in bed with two guys. Why's he going to bother being friends with someone who hid all of that when he's not going to get why I did it?"

"Maybe he'll get exactly why you did it."

"Do you think it would have been different if I'd, like, been in a band?" Harry asked. "I know it's weird, it's just that I was talking to Simon Cowell and he was saying he thought about it. Back when I was at Boot Camp on the X Factor. Me and some of the other lads. Don't know why he decided against it. Do you think I'd be, like, searching Twitter for people talking shit about me if I'd been in a band? Just having other people around to tell you you're being an idiot."

"I'll tell you you're an idiot any day of the week."

Harry leaned over and kissed his cheek. "You're very kind."

Louis knew he'd gone all red. His skin tingled from where Harry had kissed him. "Idiot," he said. He bumped his knee into Harry's under the blanket. "What about if, like, you just had a better team around you? You don’t have a band. You've got people who work with you now, right? Meghan and people from the PR company, or whatever."

Harry shrugged. He didn't move his knee away from Louis's under the covers. "I feel like we're different wavelengths. They're not bad people. I just don't feel like they get me. I've always thought Meghan was pissed off to get my account. Loser on the X Factor, it's not like I'm her dream client or whatever."

"Get someone who does think you're their dream client, then."

Harry made a face. "I can't believe they made you sign a non-disclosure and never told me about it. Do you really need to do that for someone who didn't win X Factor?"

"I can't believe they didn't have a better plan for you coming out than one that caused you to run half way up the fucking country. Did you ever talk about it?"

"No."

Louis rolled his eyes. "You should have done. I know you were fucking outed but it's not like they've put a mountain of work into spinning this your way. Get a new team."

"Like it's that easy."

"Ask your friend Nick. He might know. You're still under contract with your record label, right? One more album?"

"How the fuck do you know that?"

"Because I sit next to this girl Lisa at work who fucking loves you, and I've spent two years hating you and having to know more about the ins and outs of your life than when I was actually sleeping with you, so, yeah."

Harry made a face. "God."

"Ask your record label to find you new PR representation. Don't ask them, tell them. They've done a shit job of handling you and not making you run half way up the country. And I hate Meghan. Them lawyers were terrifying."

"What did they tell you?"

"That if I breathed one word of our relationship to anyone, including my family, they'd sue me for everything and stretch the court case out and make me liable for their court costs. Then they told me how much an hour of their time cost and how much work went into a court case."

"Fuck. Is that true?"

"How the fuck do I know? It's not like I could ask anyone without breaking the agreement. I can't afford my own lawyer. Niall says his cousin will do me mates rates, but I can't afford them, either."

"I can. I'll pay for it. You should take it to a lawyer and find out just what it means."

"Harry—"

"We need someone objective. It can't be one of the record company lawyers, they've obviously got a vested interest. Is Niall's cousin good?"

"He's a lawyer. That's good enough, right?" He paused, tapping his fingers against Harry's thigh. "Are you really going to pay, because I really, really can't. I can't have another debt I can't pay. At some point it's going to catch up with me."

"Not for this." Under the blanket, Harry's hand found his, his fingers lacing with Louis's. "You think I can just get a new team?"

"Maybe. I don't know. It's worth a try though, right? If you can't have your imaginary band telling you you're an idiot, maybe you can just get a PR team who will deal with the fall out when you actually are one."

"I really love you, you know."

Louis didn't say anything to that. There wasn't anything _to_ say. Harry had loved him last time, too. It hadn't changed how it had ended up. 

"I've got work tomorrow," he said finally, disentangling his hand from Harry's. It was early-ish and they hadn't finished the film. He was still too full to sleep. "I should grab a shower and get an early night."

Harry dropped his gaze. "Am I sleeping out here?"

There was a long pause. "No," Louis said finally. "Not if you don't want to."

When Harry's eyes met his, they were bright. Louis was so fucked. He was so, so fucked. 

"All right," Harry said finally. "Me and Humph will clear up in here whilst you shower."

"Humph's in with me," Louis said quickly. "He's a weirdo who sits in the sink just to keep me company."

Harry's gaze looked decidedly shaky. "He's a good cat. Knows how to look after his master."

"Yeah," Louis said. "He really does."

Harry looked away first. 

When Louis got out of the shower, the kitchen was cleaned up, there were two cups of tea on the bedside table in the bedroom, and Louis wanted to get used to this. He so, so wanted to get used to this. 

"I made tea," Harry said, from the doorway, already in his pyjamas, although it was so cold they just looked like layers of tracksuit bottoms and hoodies. "I'll do my teeth whilst you get ready for bed."

"All right," Louis said. He was shivering in his towel. Humph jumped onto the bed and stretched out in the middle, staking out his space. 

"You'll get cold."

"I already am," Louis said, and neither of them said anything to that.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's google searches included: "cats in hats" "hats for cats" "dogs in sombreros" "why wouldn't a cat deserve a crown" and "why wouldn't i deserve a crown". These are my favourite of today's cats: [this one](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lv2bujcyQx1r4e10po2_250.gif), [this one](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/99/63/e9/9963e9453322f2300db5a6dc358c349a.jpg), and [this one](http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/01604/SNN2035CAT-620_1604704a.jpg).
> 
> If you need to ask me anything about tonight's chapter, or you need spoiling, then you can [send me an ask](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/ask).

Liam was already in the pub when Louis got there the following night, a third of the way down his pint and playing Candy Crush on his phone. 

"How can people be so stupid?" Liam said, instead of _hello_. He put his phone down on the table. "I had someone complain about how their monitor was broken today, and Lenny went to fix it, and came back to the office with the fucking monitor to test it, and obviously it worked fine because it wasn't in the least bit broken, spoiler, but they took another monitor back up to their office, and _that wouldn't work_ , and Lenny spent, like, a whole hour and a half trying to figure out what was wrong with every monitor they took up there when they'd work fine down in our office, and nobody thought to check whether the idiot had accidentally turned the monitor plug off at the wall?"

"Good day at the office then, mate?" Louis put his pint down on the table next to Liam's, and hoped nobody thought to taste it. Lager shandy reminded him being of thirteen, but it was cheaper and there was nothing else for Louis to do but try and figure out how the hell he was supposed to pay off thousands of pounds' worth of debt when he only just made enough every month to cover his actual expenses. 

"Lenny is even thicker than me," Liam said, and Louis elbowed him. 

"Shut it, mate. My computer at work does something weird and I've got no idea how to fix it. You'd come and sort it out, no probs."

"Lenny wouldn't. Lenny drives me mad. I think he does it deliberately so he doesn't have to do any fucking work." Liam rolled his eyes. "You okay?"

"Totally," Louis lied. He had Harry's new number in his phone but he hadn't used it yet. A part of him worried that he'd get home to find Harry gone; another part of him was still concerned he'd take Humph with him when he went. The biggest part of him worried that Harry would still be there when he got home, burrowing his way under Louis's skin all over again. 

"Any, like, news after the paper at the weekend?"

Louis concentrated on his glass. "Nothing I can talk about," he said as levelly as he could manage. 

"I don't get that," Liam said. "I don't get why you can't talk about it."

"Is Niall coming, or what? I want to ask him about his cousin."

"Willie? He's pretty cool. Straight, though. Niall's on his way."

"I don't want to go out with him, Liam. I need a lawyer."

Liam put his pint for. "What's going on, Lou? You can tell us, you know. Whatever it is."

"I wish I could," Louis said, staring down at the table. "I really fucking wish I could, but I can't. I can't tell you anything."

Liam bumped his knee into Louis's under the table. "I hate secrets," he said a little gloomily. "But we've got your back. Me and Niall. Whatever it is we can do. You're not in trouble, are you?"

Louis shook his head. "Only the normal amount. I'd tell you if I could, you know. I fucking hate secrets."

"You know where we are. How's your cat?"

"I found this website that just has pictures of cats in top hats at lunchtime. Then I found this website that sells actual hats for cats. I was, like, ten seconds away from buying Humph a top hat." He was, at most, ten seconds away from adding it to his imaginary wish list for a future where he could buy something fun, just for no reason other than he wanted to. Sometimes he wanted to cry. 

"You are so obsessed with that cat."

Louis grinned. "And just think, before I got him, I was so sure I was a dog person through and through. I was fucking convinced that cats were the antichrist. Well," he paused, "I'm still not entirely convinced Humph isn’t the devil. If the devil's haughty as fuck, you know?"

"Haughty," Liam said, rolling his eyes. "Look at you. Hey hey, Nialler's here. Get us a bag of crisps, Niall. What flavour do you want, Lou?"

"I'm all right," Louis lied. "I'm well full."

"A bag of cheese and onion and one of smoky bacon if they've got it," Liam called across to Niall, ignoring Louis. "You'll eat them if I get them, right?"

Louis fucking hated being the one who consistently sponged off everyone else. He was just—he was hungry. He spent a lot of time hungry, and the food he ate never properly satisfied him. Sometimes it just gave him the shits, because he'd spent the whole fucking week living off value sliced bread and fuck knows what they put in that sometimes, but it wasn't fucking flour. Sometimes he lived off jam sandwiches and reduced soft potatoes and value baked beans for days at a time.

Somewhere out there was a vitamin, and one day he might actually get to eat one. 

"All right, lads," Niall said, coming over with a pint and two bags of crisps and a packet of peanuts. "I had a right fucking day of it."

"I had to stop Lenny chucking a monitor in a skip because he hadn't noticed it wasn't switched on at the wall."

"That guy's a total fucking lemon." Niall told Liam, clapping Louis on the back, pulling up a stool. "You all right, mate? You haven't been around much on the old, you know." He pretended to text on an imaginary phone. 

"Been busy. And that phone's shit." 

"I know the feeling." Niall had an iPhone with a smashed screen. Niall was always really careful with his things, and his flat was always clean and tidy, but some dickhead had got drunk and tripped over and had kicked Niall's bag in the process in the pub last month, and had got his phone with the toe of his boot. "Did you see that no one's heard from Harry Styles?"

Louis did his best not to react. He twitched. "No," he said carefully. "That's not been in the papers."

"It's all over Twitter," Niall said. "And on Tumblr. Apparently no one's seen or heard from him since Saturday night."

"I'm sure he's fine," Louis said, trying to ignore the frantic beating of his heart. People were worried. They were worried about Harry, and Louis had him holed up in his flat. 

"You haven't heard from him, have you?" 

Louis didn't flinch, but he didn't make eye contact with Niall either. "Why would you think he'd call me?"

"Dunno. Just that picture, innit, in the paper? You and him and Humph. You might have heard from him."

"Say it louder," Louis said. "That table over there in the corner might not have heard you."

Niall glanced around them, but the pub was fairly empty for six thirty. "Sorry. So, you haven't, then?"

Louis flicked his fingernail against the edge of the table. "Did you mean it when you said your cousin would do me mates rates?"

Niall glanced at Liam, then back at Louis. "You need him?"

"I think so," Louis said. "Will you ask him for me?"

"Course," Niall said. "I'll get him to ring you."

"Thanks." 

Under the table, Liam's knee bumped into Louis's, and Louis bumped his right back, glad of the contact. They were good mates, Niall and Liam, and the three of them slotted together pretty easily. They were the best thing about this town. 

"Quiz night tonight, lads. You both up for it?"

Louis made a face. "Can't. Got a Tesco delivery coming at eight."

Niall made a face right on back. "It's pub night, Tommo."

"It's cat food delivery night, Nialler. You and Liam, though. You'll be a drunk quiz mess."

"We'll just be a mess," Liam said. "I'm driving, got the Fiesta outside. Two pint limit, me."

"I'm up for it if you are, Liam," Niall said, and just for a moment, watching on, Louis felt like he was on the outside, looking in. 

It was gone as soon as he'd thought it, Niall clapping him on the back and nudging the crisps over. 

"Next week, though," Liam said. "The three of us. We'll do the quiz, all right?"

Louis nodded. "I'm in," he said, because Harry would be gone by then, and Louis would have to figure out how to get the fuck on with his life without him. 

~*~

He got home at ten past eight to find Harry watching the second half of _Emmerdale_ and trying to fistbump the cat. 

"Stop trying to teach my cat tricks," Louis said, dumping his stuff on the floor and coming over to lean over the back of the sofa and press his nose to Humph's in a weird kind of _hello_. "What are you watching?" As if Louis didn't waste a million hours watching whatever he could on telly just because there was nothing else to do. 

"This is great," Harry said. "I've never really watched _Emmerdale_ before. How can a village that size sustain a café, a shop, and a pub? It's only got five people in it."

"Stop asking difficult questions," Louis said, and tried to ignore the urge to close the distance between the two of them and kiss Harry hello. "How was your day?"

"I've read all your books," Harry said. "You only have six, but I've read them all."

"I could go to the charity shop on my lunch break. Sometimes the Mind shop on the parade has that basket out the front, like, three books for a pound or something. You're probably kind of stuck with what they have, though."

Harry tilted his chin up a little. "Why are you being so good to me?"

"Dunno." Louis was still leaning over the back of the sofa. "Cos you're having a hard time of it? I don't know."

"I'm glad you are," Harry said. "I know it's not been easy for you. I'm not an idiot. But it's really helped. Not being on my own. I like trying to—" he paused. "I don’t want you to feel like you're on your own either. Because you're not."

Louis really did want to kiss him. He really fucking couldn't. "You called your mum yet?"

"Not yet. I will."

"Niall says that Twitter thinks you're missing or something."

"You were talking about me?"

Louis stilled. "Would it be a problem if I was?"

"No," Harry said, but it was clearly a lie. He waited a moment. "I'll call her tomorrow, okay? I'm building up to it."

"Text her at least, will you? So she knows you're okay."

Harry made a face. "I'm scared of what she might say."

"I know. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it."

Harry stroked Humph, who meowed, then tilted his face up to Louis. 

So long as Humph loved Louis best, then the rest could go on by itself. 

"What if you were here when I did it," Harry said carefully. "Would you… uh, would that be okay?"

Louis let Humph bat his paw against Louis's hand. "All right," he said finally. "If that's what you want."

"Might be easier," Harry admitted, and Louis was about to ask if Harry would be there when Louis rang _his_ mum, when the doorbell rang. 

"Tesco," Louis said, and Harry stood up to go and hide in the bedroom with the cat. 

The delivery guy was a ginger with a pony tail and a beard, and he wouldn't let Louis help carry any of the trays up the stairs. Louis trailed him upstairs instead, and busied himself emptying the bags out of the trays and onto the floor whilst the guy went downstairs to get more trays. Christ, how much stuff had Harry ordered? He'd come up twice already, and they were on six trays now, and the guy was going down for more. There wasn't any room on the living room floor for him to unload the bags with the stack of empty trays. Louis tried to shove some of the bags onto the table, but he ended up knocking all of the papers onto the floor, all of his bills and reminders and letters about his stupid fucking debt. 

"Shit," Louis said, trying to scoop them all up so that the delivery guy didn't see them. 

The letter from Talk Talk cutting off his internet had a little message on the top in blue biro: _paid 20/01 payment ref HB9537657KL_. The arrears notice from the water company had one too, _paid 21/01_. So did the council tax and gas bill and the electric bill and, oh god, his fucking credit card. His credit card with his £3200 maxed-out balance. He was going to be sick. 

The Tesco guy came back in, balancing three trays and one last carrier bag this time, and Louis was either going to throw up or weep, and neither of those was preferable. He shoved the bills down at the back of the table, watching as the delivery guy unpacked the trays onto the floor and made some stupid comment about him being all prepared for the zombie apocalypse now.

Louis nodded, accepting the order with its list of substitutions without checking it. His gaze swam. He dropped it onto the table, watching as the guy stacked up his trays. 

"You have a good night now," the guy said, and Louis nodded again. His hands were shaking. 

He didn't hear the downstairs door slam, but Harry came out of the bedroom anyway. 

"Oh good," Harry said, Humph in his arms. "It's all here."

A sob caught in Louis's throat. "You dickhead," he said. "You fucking ginormous fucking dickhead, what the fuck did you think you were doing?"

Harry looked surprised. "Buying food," he said. Humph was whining about being put down, and Harry probably got scratched in the process. Good. "As a thank you for putting me up."

"That's not a thank you," Louis said, "that's a fucking charity package, and I'm not fucking charity. I don't need your food and your stupid help and I don't need you."

"You had nothing in your cupboards," Harry said. 

"Yeah?" Louis snapped. "I do have stuff in my cupboards. I look after myself and I look after my fucking cat, and we don't need you." His chest hurt. His ribs felt like they were contracting inwards. He couldn't fucking breathe. 

"What were you going to do? You were almost out of food."

"I wasn't almost out of food, but hey, you know what? There's a fucking food bank in town, and you feel like you're dying inside but you don't go fucking hungry when you go there."

"Oh no," Harry said. "No, no, Lou."

"Stop looking at me like you're sorry for me," Louis said, and he was crying now, he was so angry and so ashamed. "Stop looking at me like I'm nothing."

Harry looked like he was about to cry too. "You're not nothing, Louis."

"Aren't I?" Louis said, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "Because that's what you've made me feel like. Where the fuck do you get off paying my bills for me?" He grabbed a handful of the letters. "What the fuck did you think you were doing?"

"Helping you," Harry said. "You can't pay them and I can."

"Oh god," Louis said. He was going to be sick. "I hate you. I hate you so much."

"Let me help you," Harry begged. "Please, Louis."

Louis shook his head. "I'm not nothing," he said. "I was going to get myself out of this. I didn't need your help."

"How?"

"What?"

"How the fuck were you going to get out of it? Where were you going to find that kind of money? Rob a bank?"

"I was going to sort it out. Shut up."

"It was too much," Harry said, and he was crying now too. "It was too much for you to have to deal with alone."

"And you just sorted it," Louis said, and he'd never felt this worthless. "It was so fucking easy for you, just snap your fingers and you've sorted out half my debt. It took you ten seconds to fix my life. I bet you feel like God, right? Does this make you feel good?"

"No," Harry said, shaking his head. He was properly crying. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I was just trying to help fix things. I wanted to make things better for you."

"You haven't," Louis said, trying to kick some of the bags out of the way so he could go and hide in the bedroom with his cat. "You've made me feel like I'm nothing. I feel like that all the time anyway, but now you've put a fucking cherry on the top. Or like a neon fucking light right over my head." He scrubbed at his eyes with his fists, scrambling out of the living room over the pile of Tesco bags. "Humph. Humph, kitten."

He stepped into the hall. The front door was open. The delivery guy mustn't have pulled it shut after him. 

"Humph," he said again, panic starting in his chest. He darted into the bedroom. "Humph, baby, Humph."

There was no cat. He wasn't under the bed or on top of the cupboard or in the sink or sitting on the cistern in the bathroom. Humph didn't hide, he never had. He was always right where you could see him. Louis went out onto the landing, leaning over the bannister to see down to the hall below, and the door to the building. That was open too. 

He remembered not hearing it slam.

"He's not in the flat," Harry said, from the doorway. "Louis, he's not in the flat."

Louis looked at him, wild-eyed. "Where's my cat, Harry? Where's my fucking cat?"

"I don't know," Harry said. 

Louis ran down the stairs and out into the street. "Humph," he yelled. "Humph." He kept turning around, but there wasn't a grey and white fluffball with a grumpy frown sitting and waiting for him anywhere. The street was deserted. 

His cat was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional spoiler: the person who called out IT because their monitor was broken but didn't realise they'd switched the plug off underneath the desk with their foot was me. The person who threw my perfectly good monitor out and wouldn't let me have it back once I realised the power-related reasoning for why it wasn't working was my extremely incapable IT guy.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's Google searches: "penguin hot water bottles" "penguin hotties" "microwaveable animals" (I was cold) "how to find lost cats" "cat reunions" "do cats know their way home" "how to dry a wet cat" and "[persian cats coming home](https://www.pets4you.com/images/breeds/persian.jpg)". 
> 
> You're welcome.

"Humph," Louis called again. "Humph." Oh Christ, his cat. His fucking cat. 

"I'll help," Harry said, from the doorway, but Louis ran back up to the door, shoving him back inside. 

"No," Louis told him, pushing him behind the door. "No, someone will see you." He was already turning around again, looking wildly at trees, at parked cars, at all of the hundreds of places his beautiful, grumpy, terrified cat could be. Humph, who had never been outside. He was a spoiled kitten, an inside cat who served as Louis's one hook to keep on going every day, to press on with the reality of being poor and alone and miserable and keeping a job he wasn't in the least bit bothered about. 

"I don't care," Harry persisted, trying to get past Louis. "Humph. _Humph_."

"He doesn't know your voice," Louis said. "He knows mine." He ran across the road, then back again, insistent, desperate, devastated. "Stay here so he can get back in if he comes back. Please. Please." 

"Lou—"

A sob caught in Louis's throat. "My cat, Harry. My cat's gone."

"We'll get him back," Harry told him after a pause, his hand to Louis's elbow. "I won't move, I promise. I'll stay here. He's got someone to come home to. Go and find him."

Louis's heart pounded. "He's never been outside."

"I know," Harry said. "Go on, babe."

Louis ran down the street, calling Humph's name. He looked under cars and in front gardens and over walls. Humph was good at climbing things, he was always on top of Louis's wardrobe. Maybe he was up a tree. 

He didn't mean to cry. He was so fucking scared. 

He checked all the surrounding streets, but there wasn't anything. There was a guy who told him to stop yelling because his kids were in bed, but Louis didn't care. He wiped his runny nose on his sleeve and kept on calling Humph's name, even as the guy told him to get lost. 

No one cared that his cat was gone. No one cared. He ran all the way down the street to the main road, but there wasn't any sign. 

He stopped a guy walking down the road. "Have you seen my cat? He's grey and white. He's probably terrified."

"Sorry," the guy said. "I haven't seen anything."

Louis waited until the guy had gone round the corner, then slumped back against a lamppost. He checked his phone. Harry had texted every few minutes to say that Humph wasn't back, but it had been forty five minutes now. His phone buzzed with another text, but it was from Niall instead. _Next week we'll smash this quiz mate. Will get willie to ring you in the morning._

Louis wiped his eyes on his sleeve and pressed call. 

"Lou, mate," Niall said as he picked up. "We'll smash it next week if we're a team, all three of us."

"Niall," Louis managed, and then he was crying, and it was awful, and he couldn't stop. 

"What's wrong?"

"Humph's gone," Louis tried to say, but he was crying too hard to get his words out. "I've been looking and looking but he's gone and I can't find him and he's probably scared and I can't find him. I can't find him."

"Louis."

"I can't find him," Louis said again. "He got out and I can't find him. Help me. Please."

"Liam will drive," Niall said. "Humph's missing, Liam. Louis can't find him. We're coming now. We'll be ten minutes, tops."

"Five," Liam said, in the background. "We'll be there in five."

"Five minutes," Niall said. "We'll meet you at yours. Keep looking."

~*~

"No sign," Harry said, as Louis jogged back to the door. "I'm sorry."

"Where is he?" Louis asked, wiping his eyes on his sleeve again. "Where's my fucking cat?"

"We'll find him."

"It's been an hour," Louis said, as Liam's Fiesta pulled up in front of Louis's building. "Thank fuck. They're here."

"Lou—" Harry managed. 

"I don't care," Louis said. "I haven't told them about you and you can go and fucking hide if you want, I'll leave one of them here to wait by the door instead."

"No. I'll stay."

Louis glanced at him, but then Liam was jogging over and wrapping Louis up into a hug. 

"You okay?" Liam asked, and Louis knew he was probably snotting all over Liam's duffel coat. 

"No," Louis sniffed. "He got out. I can't find him. What if something's happened to him?"

"We'll find him," Liam said, stepping back so that Niall could hug him too. "We can coordinate the search. Where have you looked so far?"

"I don't know. Everywhere. Nowhere. He's nowhere."

"One of us should stay here in case he comes back," Liam said, taking charge. He was good at things like this. 

"I'm doing that," Harry said, from the doorway. 

"Holy fucking Christ," Niall said. "Everyone's looking for you."

"Not the point," Louis said, because Humph was gone, and it felt like his heart had been ripped out of his chest. "Harry's staying here. Us three can look for Humph."

"We need torches," Liam said. "I've got one on my phone and so has Niall."

"I haven't," Louis said, and maybe he hadn't been able to find Humph because he didn't have a torch and his phone was a piece of fucking shit. "I haven't got one."

"Take mine. The code's 0311." Harry shoved his phone at Louis. "Give me yours so I can call you if he comes home."

Louis stared down at the phone. 

"Take it," Harry said. "Just take something I'm offering, all right?"

Louis took the phone, and fumbled his into Harry's hand. "Call me if he comes home, all right? But not for long. There's not much credit left."

"Course," Harry said. "Good luck."

~*~

Almost an hour later and Louis was desperate. It had started to rain and the clouds were thick so there wasn't any moonlight, and Humph was nowhere to be found. Humph hated water. He hated getting anywhere near a bath and that one time he'd tipped an entire plastic tub of salsa all over himself had been a day Louis never wanted to remember. He'd ended up with enough cat scratches to make sure he didn't forget, though. 

"Humph," he called, because Niall's Google search had said not to shout because it scared already terrified lost cats. "Humph, baby. Time to come home." He could hear Liam calling from one street over, but Niall had gone the other direction. 

They couldn't search forever. He was already wet through. Maybe Humph was gone for good. 

His shoulders dropped, and he turned back around to walk back home. He hadn’t got Liam or Niall's numbers on Harry's phone, so he couldn't text them and tell them to give it up. They all had to work in the morning, and it was late, and they were soaking wet. Hopefully Humph was curled up somewhere dry and safe, and in the morning he'd be home demanding revolting tinned cat food in gravy and that horrible smelling dry food he had when Louis could afford it. He'd go to the shop in the morning and get the whole range, treats included, and see if he couldn't spoil him rotten when he came home. 

_If_ Humph came home. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve again, even though it didn't matter because he was wet through. 

Liam was waiting for him at the corner of the road. "I'll come and look again in the morning before work," he said. "I promise."

Louis nodded, trying not to give into tears again. Liam wrapped an arm around his shoulders. 

"We'll find him. And I can make posters at work and print them off. We can put them everywhere."

Christ, lost cat posters. "All right."

"He'll be fine," Liam said, hugging him again. 

"I lost him, though. I was so busy fighting with Harry I didn't even notice him slipping out. This is all my fault."

"It's not anyone's fault. These things happen. We'll find him."

"He's my cat," Louis said, trying not to cry. "I haven't spent a night away from him since he was a baby. Not once."

"Come on," Liam said. "Let's go back to yours. Put the heating on, have a cup of tea. Get warmed up and dry."

"Unlike Humph."

"None of that," Liam said. "Come on. You're shivering."

Louis nodded, and let Liam tug him into his side. They still called Humph's name, and Louis kept listening out for his little meow, but there wasn't anything. 

"I'm texting Niall," Liam said. "Telling him to meet us back at yours."

"All right," Louis said quietly, over the rain. "Have I let Humph down?"

"No, babe. No, not for a second."

"Feels like it."

They turned into Louis's street a few minutes later, and there were two people leaning up against the door of Louis's building. Niall must have got there first. He waved at them. He looked wet through, even from a distance.

"Come on," Liam said, rubbing his hand over Louis's bicep. "Let's get you inside and warmed up."

"I'm fine," Louis lied, because he couldn't stop shaking and he had no fucking idea how much of that was him being cold and how much of it was terror over losing Humph. 

"I know," Liam said. 

There was a little, tiny meow. 

"Oh god," Louis managed, spinning around. "Humph?"

Another tiny meow. 

It was coming from the other side of the high wall, and Louis threw himself at it, pulling himself up to peer over just in time to see a bedraggled, wet Humph push his way through the gate and onto the pavement by Louis's feet. 

Louis dropped down to the ground, going down onto his knees. His legs were shaking. "Humphrey," he managed, and Humph scrambled up into Louis's lap, wet through and muddy and fluffy and meowing over and over like he'd been looking for Louis just as hard as Louis had been looking for him. "I thought I'd lost you. You were gone and I thought I'd lost you."

Humph kept meowing at him, scrabbling into the curve of Louis's arms like he had done when he'd been a sleepy baby kitten, trying to press closer, still meowing. Louis buried his face in Humph's fur. 

He couldn't stop shaking. 

"Come on," Liam said, hand to his shoulder. "It's tipping it down. Let's get you both inside."

"Yeah," Niall said, and Louis hadn't even heard him arrive. "It's freezing out here."

"Is he okay?" Harry asked hesitantly. 

Humph meowed a little piteously. 

"I'm not letting him go," Louis said. "I'm never letting him go."

"Yeah well," Niall said. "You do just that. Once we're inside."

Louis nodded slowly, and stumbled awkwardly to his feet, Harry's hand to his elbow. His knees were going to be so bruised. He didn't even care. 

He had his cat back. He had Humph back. 

Inside, he waited until Liam had checked that the door was carefully shut and locked behind them all before he grabbed his towel from the bathroom hook. He didn't look at any of them, just going into the bedroom with Humph, closing the door and sliding down onto the floor with his back up against the door. 

Humph meowed. 

Louis wrapped him up in the towel, rubbing his wet fur. "You're all safe now, baby," he told him softly, even though he was shivering. "You're all safe and home and you don't need to be scared any more."

"Lou," Harry said through the door, trying the handle. "Louis, let us in."

Louis ignored him, touching his nose to Humph's. "You had an adventure, didn't you? Out in the big wide world. Let's get you dry, huh? All dry and safe."

"Louis," Harry said again. "Please."

"Lou," Niall said. "Come on."

"No need to be scared anymore," Louis told Humph again, wiping his nose on the wet sleeve of his coat. "You don't need to be scared. Everything's going to be okay now. You're home. You're home with me. You and me against the world."

This time when Louis started to cry, he couldn’t fucking make himself stop.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's important Google searches: "cats that look like dinosaurs" "tesco potato wedges" "what if I lived in a place that allowed pets" "i am not living the dream" "is it dangerous to eat sugar that's two years out of date" "why would sugar go out of date" "cats on the internet that want to hug you" and "[snuffle wuffle kittens](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8c/c0/cc/8cc0cccada2bd3db248f7a1681ccef91.jpg)". This isn't a kitten but it was on the snuffle wuffle kittens page (don't go there, there's a lot on there that is neither snuffly nor wuffly nor a kitten), but [this example](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/c1/31/dc/c131dc4b228b3bd4870afe71d2c919b8.jpg) is adorable.
> 
> Content notes: some boys making poor language choices.

"Louis, open the door," Harry said, rattling the doorknob. 

Louis shook his head, crying into Humph's wet fur. He didn't know why he was crying. He should be happy; he had his cat back. He had his cat back, Harry would be gone soon so everything would go back to normal, he had food in his cupboards, and he had his credit card paid off. These were the things he used to have nightmares about: the days where he struggled for there to be enough for both him and Humph to eat. When he had to trek out to the budget version of Home Bargains for the value cat food that made Humph's fur lose its shine and reminded Louis of how he looked those times he had to resort to washing his hair with soap. 

It wasn't that bad. He had a roof over his head and a job and sometimes people brought in biscuits so it wasn't like he never got to have anything nice. Niall and Liam were fucking great lads, and his cat was the best cat ever. He didn't know why he was crying. He didn't know why he felt so ashamed and alone and like now the dam had broken it wasn't ever going to stop. 

"Louis." Niall's voice. "Let us in, won't you? We've got the kettle on. Heating's on too, come and have a cup of tea."

Humph meowed, and Louis scrubbed at his cheeks with his cold, clammy fists. He was still crying. It was too hard. It was all too hard and he'd come so close to losing the only thing that managed to get him through most of his days. Humph was the only spot of warmth he had sometimes, the reason he went to work on days where he really couldn't face it.

"Louis." Liam this time. "Come on. Don't be in there by yourself."

"He was gone," Louis said, and he felt like an idiot, but he still couldn't stop shaking. "I thought I'd lost him."

"I know," Liam said. "But we've got him back now. Come on. Let us in."

Louis was so ashamed. He was so fucking ashamed of how shit he was at being an adult. He shifted over just enough that he was leaning against the wardrobe instead of the bedroom door. Normally he would have had to push discarded clothes out of the way, but Harry had obviously been cleaning in here too. The clothes were all tidied away and the carpet looked like someone had attempted to run a hoover over it. 

Harry was clearing up one bit of Louis's life at a time, and every bit of it made Louis feel like a failure. 

Humph meowed, and someone tried the door, pushing it open gently when it turned out that Louis wasn't leaning against it anymore. 

It was Niall, and he came in and crouched by Louis. "You're wet through," he said gently. "And freezing. You haven't even taken your coat off."

Humph was caught up against Louis's chest, still wrapped in the towel. He meowed again, his whiskers tickling against Louis's throat. 

"I'm all right," Louis lied, because he didn't want to put his cat down. 

"You're shaking," Niall said. "Come on. We'll look after Humph. He probably wants some food, don't you, champ? You need to get those wet clothes off and a shower."

"You need to eat something too," Harry said from the doorway. He looked awkward and damp and concerned. Louis's chest contracted, but he was so het up he didn't know if it was from anger or something else. Something deeper. "You haven't eaten anything."

"I don't want anything."

"There are potato wedges," Harry went on, like Louis hadn't spoken. "You always used to like those, right? Or I could make sandwiches. There's ham and cheese."

"I feel sick."

"I know," Harry said, after a pause. "It's all right. You've had a horrible night."

The tears were going to turn up again. He could feel them pressing closer. He hated this. He hated how much of himself he was showing, all those secrets he'd been keeping threatening to spill. "I'm sorry," he managed, wiping his eyes. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

"It's freezing outside, and raining," Liam said. "You were out an hour longer than we were, and it's your cat. Of course you're upset."

Humph pressed his cold nose to Louis's cheek. It tickled. 

"I'm sorry," Louis said again, but Niall was taking Humph from him, bundling him up in his arms even as Humph was meowing. 

"Your daddy needs a shower," Niall said, standing up. "Otherwise he'll freeze to death." He glanced at Harry, then at Louis. "Come on, Liam, let's get that tea on."

Harry waited until Liam and Niall were in the living room before he came to crouch by Louis's side. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I'm so, so sorry. I was trying to help."

"You made me feel so ashamed," Louis said, and he was crying again, even as Harry was reaching for him, hand to his shoulder. "You made me feel like a failure even more than I normally do."

"You're not a failure." Harry touched his fingers to Louis's cold ones. "You're the most not a failure person I know. I came to you. Over everyone else in the world. I came to you."

Louis was shivering. "Harry, what if we hadn't found him?"

"Shush," Harry said. "Don't think that. We did. But we're not talking now. You need to get out of those clothes. Come on, you're wet through. Shower."

"All right." 

Louis stumbled to his feet, and found a towel with trembling fingers. This one was a bit threadbare but his normal towel was wrapped around Humph and covered in cat hair so he'd take this smaller, scrappier one. Harry had gone into the bathroom to put the shower on. The bath was pink and most of the sealant was coming off. 

Harry put the towel over the sink and gave him a small smile. "I'm sorry."

"I know," Louis said, but he waited until the door had closed after Harry before he put his head in his hands and tried to breathe. 

~*~

He didn't feel much warmer even after his shower, but Harry had laid out clean tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt and a hoodie that had been worn so much that it practically moulded itself to Louis's body, and fluffy, fuzzy socks that looked a little bit like the cast of Monsters Inc. had been shredded and reformed into something terrifying. And sock-like. 

Embarrassment didn't quite cover how he felt. He was humiliated, breaking down and crying so much over his cat. Liam and Niall having to see him like that. It was too much to think about. And it was almost midnight and they all had to work in the morning. 

He struggled to get his tracksuit bottoms on because his knees were all stiff and grazed and bruised, and it was starting to hurt to bend his knees. His legs had just given out when he'd seen Humph and he'd hit the pavement with quite a wallop. He'd been so scared. 

Liam knocked at his door. "I've brought you some tea," he said, coming in and sitting down on the bed. 

Louis put on his socks. "I'm sorry," he said. "For being so mental. For dragging you both here to look for my cat."

"Don't be silly," Liam told him, handing him the mug. "That's what friends do, innit? Come straight over when there's an emergency."

Louis wasn't going to cry again. This week had been very, very long. So had the last couple of years. "Bet you didn't expect me to cry all over the place, though."

Liam shrugged. "You saw me cry when I broke up with Soph."

"Normal though, innit? Crying when a bird dumps you. Not over a cat."

Liam made a face. "Are we going to talk about Harry?"

Louis shook his head. "No," he said. "But you can't tell anyone he's here."

"Harry says we can if we want to. He said he'd like it if we didn't, but that he wasn't taking anyone's choices away from them."

"Fucking hell," Louis said. "What a dickhead."

"He's making you chips."

"Yeah," Louis said. "Is my cat okay? No one's let him out, right?"

"He's being spoiled. Come on through."

"How come neither you nor Niall need to shower? Did you miss the rain, or what?"

"My coat took most of it. So did Niall's. We've both got damp jeans. We'll cope. I'm going to have this tea and a few chips then head off. Drop his lordship off. Both got work in the morning."

"So have I."

"Think about taking a day off tomorrow, all right? You've had a properly rotten night, and it's late."

Louis nodded, staring down at his tea. "I'll think about it."

"Come on. Humph will be missing you. And how come you never told his name was Humphrey?"

Louis stood up. His knees ached. "Harry named him," he said. "He's got shit taste in names."

"Humphrey's a cool name for a cat," Liam said loyally.

"Wait until you hear the rest of it." Louis took another sip of his tea, heading into the living room. His chest felt so tight, like there was another tears explosion just gearing up and getting ready to hit. It was like he was being laced too hard, the breath being forced out of him. 

Niall was sitting on the floor with Humph in front of him, stroking him behind his ears so that he purred. Harry was putting stuff in cupboards, the Tesco bags still littering the flat. 

Louis went to sit down on the sofa, Liam sitting down next to him. 

"You feeling a bit better?" Niall asked. 

"Warmer," Louis said. "Sorry. About before. Being a bit mental."

Niall just shook his head. "Don't be. It's fine."

It wasn't, but Louis wasn't up to arguing the point. All the fight had gone out of him, leaving a gently exhausted bag of bones where the rest of him used to be. "Thanks for helping me find him. I wouldn't have been able to do it without you."

"Any time."

"Chips are done," Harry said, as his phone beeped an alarm. "I'll stick them in a couple of bowls."

"Thanks," Liam said, and Niall caught Louis's eye and smiled as Harry brought over two big cereal bowls of Tesco spicy potato wedges. He always had liked them more than the more expensive McCain's alternative. Harry must have remembered. 

"There's ketchup too," Harry said, coming back over with a new bottle of Heinz. "Dig in."

Louis took a breath. "Aren't you having any?"

"Don't know," Harry said, and he looked so scared and unsure that Louis couldn't deal with it. He patted the arm of the sofa. 

"Don't be a dickhead. Sit down and have some."

"All right," Harry said finally, and Louis nodded. 

~*~

Twenty minutes later, when the chips were finished and Humph had been petted and stroked and Louis hugged, Liam and Niall were gone, and it was just Harry and Louis alone in the flat with Louis's cat. 

"I'm so sorry," Harry said again. "I've fucked everything up."

Louis's eyes were wet. "I can't do this tonight," he said, because Humph was gently stalking his prey, jumping up onto the coffee table and the arm of the sofa to come and take aim at Louis's lap. "I just… can we not, tonight? Can we just, pretend everything's okay and that you're not hiding and I haven't failed, and can you just come over here and hug me?"

Harry let out a breath as Humph curled up in Louis's lap. "Lou—"

"Please," Louis said. "Please, Harry. I can't do this."

Harry sat down next to him. "I love you," he said softly, wrapping his arms around Louis's shoulders. "And you are never, ever alone."

Just for tonight, Louis wanted to believe him. He really, really wanted to believe him.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't googled anything today other than "what are the main symptoms of stress" which isn't all that funny and pictures of kittens would be infinitely preferable.

Louis woke up in the morning just long enough to call in sick, then went back to sleep until quarter to twelve. He woke up to Harry making him a cup of tea and it was only when he tried to get up to go to the loo that he realised just what a mess he'd made of his knees the previous night. 

He couldn't straighten his legs without it hurting, and the bruises were coming up something terrible. He'd grazed both his knees and not even noticed how badly the night before. He'd been so caught up in getting his cat back that he hadn't paid full attention to how much falling down had hurt. 

"This is the last time I go down on my knees for you," he told Humph, who was watching him sit on the loo from his privileged position of curled up in the bathroom sink. "Look what you've done, you terrible monster." 

Humph meowed a little grumpily and pretended he had no idea what Louis was on about. 

"I know you know," Louis said, standing up and trying to shift Humph into the bath so he could wash his face. He was lazy and didn't usually bother, but his eyes hurt from all the crying last night, and he looked rubbish. "No one's going to fancy me looking like this," he told himself, forgetting that there was someone else in the flat who might overhear. He turned the water on full just in case there was a possibility Harry might be listening at the door. 

Humph meowed again, and Louis splashed a little water at him. Humph looked offended. 

"If you ever think about running away again, little lad," Louis told him, drying his face on a well scruffy hand towel. "You'll be for it."

Humph jumped onto the side of the bath and then down onto the floor. He rubbed himself against Louis's legs. 

"I know, you're sorry. I'm sorry too."

Harry was sitting on the sofa with his phone in his hand when Louis went into the living room. "Can I order something to be delivered tomorrow?"

Louis narrowed his eyes, hobbling over with his half-drunk cup of tea and trying to avoid going arse over tit falling over Humph, who was weaving round his feet like he had a fluffy death wish. "What?"

"Something for me," Harry said. He showed Louis his screen; he was on the Amazon app. "I'm getting a Kindle, I think."

"Taking up reading as a hobby?"

"I always read."

"Yeah, but you were always reading that too cool stuff, all that cult stuff that makes no sense."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Some of it makes sense."

"Maybe," Louis said. It was cold and the heating was off and his bed had been warmer. He wanted to curl into Harry's side and leech off his body heat for a bit. He let himself shuffle just a little bit closer. "Anyway, didn't you go on about how books were so much cooler when you could feel the paper?"

"I was a wanker," Harry told him. "Books are great but so's being able to buy them and carry them everywhere in something that's approximately this size." He waved his phone at Louis again, and Louis made a face and shifted a little closer. 

"My knees hurt," he complained, bumping his elbow into Harry's. Frustration curled in his gut and he wasn't even sure what he was angry at the most. 

"Maybe you need some ibuprofen. That's good for aches and pains, isn't it?"

"Haven't got any. Maybe I should go out and get some."

"Maybe. I'd go for you, except…" he trailed off. 

"Except you're hiding." Louis nodded. "You know you can't hide forever, right? At some point you're going to have to re-emerge into the world. And Niall's right, you know, people are going to be worried. Your mum's going to be worried. You need to ring her."

Harry's shoulders dropped. "I'm scared."

Louis felt like he was propping Harry up so that he was ready to go back to his life and leave Louis behind again. What was it about him that made people think he wasn't worth sticking around for? He couldn't help but snap. "It's your mum. She'll want to hear from you."

"Are you still mad at me?"

Louis rolled his eyes. "Don’t try to change the subject. And yes. Of course I'm still fucking mad that you've swooped in to fix my life and now you're about to swoop out again like I never fucking existed."

"It wasn't—I didn't mean it to be like that. I was trying to help."

"I don't have much," Louis said carefully. "I've basically got this place and my cat, and you're the one who gave me Humph in the first place, but I thought I had some fucking dignity left. I provide for me and I provide for Humph and it might not be much but we get by. You took that away."

"Louis—"

"I felt like I was nothing. It took you five seconds and you'd restocked my flat and paid all that shit off and it wasn't anything to you. It was easy. Two months ago I had to go to the fucking food bank. I compare me with you and next to you I've got nothing. What's my stuff worth next to yours? Fuck all. I had some dignity left, though. Right? But I don’t even have that."

"I love you and I wanted to help. I wanted to make it easier for you and this was the only way I knew. I thought you might be happier if it was easier."

Harry was a bit sweaty and his hair was a bit greasy and he was wrapped up in tracksuit bottoms and hoodies. He was still handsome and charming even though he was wearing his best pitiful kicked puppy face, and Louis still loved him. He still fucking loved him. None of that would stop Harry walking out of Louis's life and not looking back, though. None of it mattered in the grand scheme of things. 

"I'm not unhappy," Louis lied. 

"I am," Harry said. "If someone offered me a way of being happier, I'd take it."

"Even if it meant giving up the only thing you had left?"

Harry looked frustrated. "You're so proud. You're the proudest person I've ever met. I can make things easier for you and you won't take it."

"Because it hurts," Louis said. "You've always, always given me the fucking scraps and you're doing it again. I don't want to be so shit at being an adult that I can't pay for me and my cat to eat and sleep. I work, all right? I have this crap job and I _try_. I try all the fucking time and it isn't enough, and it isn't fair. It's not fair that you're here and it's nice having you around, it's not fair that I'll get used to it just before you fuck off back to London and your life and forget all about me again. You left me. I'd _packed_ , Harry. It was our fucking anniversary and you dumped me and you didn't even fucking tell me. I matter to you right up until the moment I don't, and then you walk away. And I have covered up how fucking hurt I was, and how you broke my heart, and how you didn't just break it, you took a fucking hammer to it, and now you're holidaying with me like not having the heating on is a treat, and you know what? It's not a treat. It's fucking cold. It's cold and I'm cold and I'm sick of it, and you're going to _go_ , like, one morning I'm going to wake up and you'll be gone, and I don't even know if you're here now, you know? Is this like fucking _Fight Club_ and I'm talking to myself? Are you off, like, having vodka shots with famous people right now? And I'm just mental and talking to my cat."

Harry pressed forward and kissed him, covering Louis's mouth with his own. He tasted like tea, and toast, and under that, minty toothpaste. 

"You're not mad," Harry said, pulling back. "I'm not somewhere else. I'm nowhere else but here, with you."

Louis wanted to cry. His chest felt like it was tightening up, the pressure rising up like bubbles in a Coke bottle. "You're going to leave me, and it's going to hurt."

"I don't want to."

"It doesn’t matter what you want," Louis said. "This isn't your home and it's not your career and it's not your fucking cat. I'm not your boyfriend and I never was."

"I want to make things right," Harry told him. "I want to fix things."

"I wanted you to love me as much as I loved you," Louis said, "but you called me creepy and co-dependent, and you called me that on the phone from fucking Miami, and you'd left me."

"I'm sorry. I was so mixed up and so scared and I loved you so much."

Louis shook his head. "You don't do that to someone you love."

"What can I do?" Harry asked, wiping his eyes. "What can I do to make it up to you? Because I'm trying. I'm trying so hard."

"But nothing's changed. I'm still a dirty little secret, and we're still only talking where no one can see me. I am not nothing, Harry. You treat me like it's okay to make me feel worthless, but it isn't. It's not fucking okay." He got awkwardly to his feet, his knees killing him. "It doesn't matter that I love you. It doesn't matter that you say you love me, because you can't, because if you did, you wouldn't think that this was all right. You wouldn't think that leaving me with that gîte in fucking France that we never fucking went to but I still had to pay eight hundred euro for was okay. But you _did_. "

Harry was crying. "I'll pay for it," he said. "I'm so sorry. I never thought. I'll pay for it."

"You just did," Louis told him. "You just paid my fucking credit card. I've been paying for that fucking holiday for two years because you didn't even think about any of that shit." He let out a breath. Harry looked devastated. This was supposed to feel satisfying, but it just felt so sad he could cry too. "Look, all right, I'm going to go to the shop and get some ibuprofen. I'll be ten minutes. Do you want anything?"

"No." Harry buried his face in his hands. "I'd do anything to make things different, but I can't change anything. I want to but I can't."

Louis looked at him. His chest hurt and his heart ached. He wanted to give in and sit back down again, draw Harry into his side and kiss him back, but Louis only had his pride left, and not as much of that left today as he'd had yesterday. 

"I won't be long," he said, mostly to Humph, and he shoved on a battered old pair of vans and his coat over his hoodie, and hobbled down the stairs. 

Rhoda McIntyre from _The Sun_ was waiting outside, her car parked opposite. She got out when she saw him emerge. 

"Nice day for it," she said, crossing the road. "I know you know where he is."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Louis said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Leave me alone."

"I told you we've got pictures," she said. "Don't think we're not afraid to use them."

He rolled his eyes, trying to sidestep her. His knees hurt. "If you had any kind of story at all you'd have used them already."

"Oh no, Louis," she said. "Maximum impact, that's what we work towards. No one cares about the old boyfriend story. Scandal and sleeze, that's what sells. And we're going to get it. Whose side do you want to be on when the story breaks? That's the question, Louis. Because you don't want to go up against me. You won't win."

Louis didn't glance back up at his flat. He didn't let himself think about Humph, and how grumpy he got when he didn’t get his revolting meat in gravy and had to make do with the bargain bin home bargains version of cat food. He didn't let himself think about how nice it might be to have the heating on when he wanted, or to look for another place to move to when the time came and to have the deposit to do just that. He remembered Harry putting him clean pyjamas out last night after turning the shower on for him, and Harry remembering he liked Tesco spicy potato wedges more than any other kind. Humph's cold nose against Louis's cheek when he was sad. Harry wanting to fix this fractured, broken mess of a friendship and the twisted remnants of their disaster of a relationship. The way they were slowly sinking into the mud, and there was nothing there to pull either of them out again. The stupid ways they were twisted together, even after all of this time. 

"I'll always pick Harry's side," he said, even though it was the stupidest fucking thing he could have said, and dangerous to boot. "It's always going to be Harry."

Her expression flickered. "Wrong answer," she said. "Scandal and sleeze, Mr Tomlinson. Scandal and sleeze."

"Go fuck yourself," Louis said, and he turned and walked away.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's google searches: "songs that the BBC banned" "why did the BBC ban George Formby" "George Formby and his little stick of blackpool rock" "how do you address a viscount" "What is there to do in norwich" "can i hire a kitten" "kittens that look like they love you" "[kittens](http://www.richardaustinimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/fluffyaustin_pictures_07.jpg) [playing](http://rugby.lt/wp-content/uploads/3215635.png.jpg) [rugby](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b2/61/e8/b261e831d091478e50d64f088403aeff.jpg)" "[persian kittens being cute](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=persian+kittens+being+cute&safe=off&espv=2&biw=1440&bih=727&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiB3Zju-M_KAhVDfxoKHad5AeIQsAQIHg)" (to which my reaction was an in-real-life, out-loud OH NO) and FINALLY, [I found a Humph](http://lovemeow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/P1017738.jpg). [And another one](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_meh8jhhHvg1rdbmsmo1_500.jpg).

Louis waited until he got round the corner before he slipped his phone out of his pocket and texted _call me_ to Harry. Then he put his phone back into his pocket and kept walking down the road towards the shops, trying not to check behind him to see if he was being followed. He didn't particularly think that he would be, but it wasn't like he understood the inner workings of a tabloid reporter either. 

He was almost at the supermarket when his phone started to buzz in his pocket; when he picked up, Harry's voice sounded thick and a little tearful. 

Louis was starting to get bored of all the tears. "Rhoda McIntyre from _The Sun_ was outside when I left," he said. "What do I do?"

"What did she say?"

"Scandal and sleeze," Louis said, in a vague impression of Rhoda's voice. "They want to know where you are. I'm pretty sure she asked me to pick a side, like it's a fucking war or something."

"What did you pick?"

"Jesus," Louis said, lowering his voice. "I've got an Non-Disclosure Agreement, what do you think I said? And anyway, I'm not a fucking cunt. I'm not shoving you in the shit just because someone offers me the chance to."

"Yeah, but--"

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Seriously. Tell me what to do."

Harry took a breath. "In case they're taking pictures," Harry said finally, "make sure you go to Boots or a chemist for your ibuprofen, then go to the shop for some orange juice or something, and carry it without a bag. Then if they are taking pictures you can legitimately say to people at work you were poorly. If she's still here when you get back, ignore her. She's trying to get a rise out of you. Don't give her one."

Louis remembered _go fuck yourself_. "Fine. Anything else?"

"I'm sorry," Harry said. "I've put you through so much."

"I'll see you at home," Louis said shortly, and hung up. 

~*~

He got home with sore bruised knees and an overwhelming general exhaustion at the thought of going over the same fucking shit all over again. Rhoda wasn't there waiting for him, which was nice, but if she wasn't there, then she was off somewhere else making things worse for Harry, and probably for Louis too. 

The concept was not overwhelmingly joyful. 

"Where's my cat?" he called, letting himself into the flat. From somewhere in the living room, Humph meowed, and padded out into the hall. "Hello, kitten. Glad to see you haven't taken yourself off on another great adventure."

His cat meowed reproachfully at him, and Louis checked the door was locked a second time before toeing off his shoes. Harry was waiting in the living room doorway. 

"All right?" Harry asked a little carefully. 

"If you mean, am I going to go off at you again, then maybe not right away."

"I really am sorry."

"And I'm really, really bored of being apologised to. It doesn't mean anything. You can't hide here any longer. You need to face up to some of this shit. Call your mum, for fuck's sake." 

Harry's shoulders dropped. "Are you chucking me out?"

"No," Louis said, pushing past him and going into the kitchen with his carton of orange juice and his box of ibuprofen. His legs ached. "I'm telling you that you've hidden for long enough. I know it's been shit and it's embarrassing and you got fucking outed, but you can't hide forever. Call your mum."

"Do you want tea, or something? I could make tea and then call."

Louis let out a breath. "I know you're scared. I know it, all right? But stop fucking running. I'll make you a cup of tea while you ring." He bumped his foot into Harry's, forcing a smile. "I'll even let you hold Humph." The _you can't take him when you go_ remained unsaid. 

Harry watched him for a long moment. "Are you all right, though?"

"Nothing a couple of ibuprofen won't fix," Louis lied, popping out a couple and pouring himself some orange juice. He'd gone with Asda own brand instead of value in case there had been a photograph of him taken. There wasn't any feeling like the gentle influx of shame over living a smartprice life. "Stop changing the subject. Ring your mum."

Harry got his phone out carefully, unlocking it with his thumbprint and then scrolling through to the contacts. He pressed call, putting it on speaker, but it just rang out, and then went to voicemail. 

"She doesn't know it's you," Louis pointed out. "She's probably getting a lot more calls than I am. Text her. Tell her your number. She'll probably call you."

"Fine," Harry said, and if his hands were shaking then Louis tried not to notice it. 

Harry's phone rang a minute later, and Harry just stared down at it. 

"Answer it," Louis hissed, and Harry answered it on speaker. 

"Harry?" 

"Mum," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Where have you been? I've been ringing and ringing your number but it always went to voicemail. Everyone's been trying to find you. God, Harry, I thought you were gone. I've been so worried. We all have."

Harry took the phone off speaker and picked it up, taking it over to the sofa where he curled up with his knees up to his chin. He was too tall and too gangly to be able to do that without looking like he was a giant on Louis's tiny sofa. It didn't mean that Louis could stop watching him, though.

"I'm not," he said. "I'm here. I was just scared. I've missed you so much. I'm sorry about Christmas."

Louis put the kettle on to boil and went to the bathroom to have a piss, Humph trotting in after him because Louis never got any fucking privacy and his cat was as co-dependent as he was. 

"Don't look at me like that," Louis said, as Humph stood on the side of the bath and yawned. "He needs to be told, all right? Can't hide here forever." He didn't add anything about how pushing him meant he might go sooner. Humph wasn't an idiot. He'd be right there waiting when it was just the two of them again, Louis and Humph against the world. 

He didn't go back into the living room to finish off making the tea. He went into the bedroom instead, curling up on the bed with Humph picking the most awkward spot to lay in, right on his arm as he got his phone out and scrolled down to his mum. He sent her a text that just said, _I love you mum xxx_

She didn't reply straight away, which probably meant she was at work. He didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. 

It was another half an hour before Harry came to find him, tear-stained but not crying. He crawled onto the bed next to Louis, and Louis rolled over to face him. "You all right?"

"I hate hurting people."

"Don't do it anymore then," Louis said. He tapped his toes against Harry's shin. "How was your mum?"

"Upset. Confused. Angry. She wants me to go home."

Louis nodded. He'd known it was going to hurt. He just hadn't expected it to feel like he'd been kicked in the chest. "Are you going to?"

Harry looked at him. "At some point," he said finally. "Got some other stuff to sort out first."

"Like what?"

Harry's expression was a little rueful. "You," he said. 

Louis rolled over again. "Nothing to sort." Humph pressed his little grumpy face against Louis's hand, his whiskers tickling. 

"There is." He paused. "Do you want to go and watch telly or something? I'm going to ring Gemma. I could do it in here instead."

Louis shook his head. "I want a kip. I'll stay in here."

"All right."

~*~

Louis didn't think he'd sleep, but when he opened his eyes again, it was dark outside, someone had covered him up with blankets, and Humph was breathing softly in a little ball of cat fluff against his chest. 

He felt like a zombie. He was shit at napping. His mouth tasted like a carpet. He made a perfectly intelligble noise that sounded a lot like _nrghhhhh_. It didn't accomplish much other than to wake the cat, who stretched out in an affronted kind of a way and batted him away. 

"Manners," Louis told him, but Humph looked a lot like manners were for other cats, ones who hadn't just been woken up and hadn't slept the whole day away. He jumped off the bed and stalked his way out of the bedroom, tail in the air. 

Humph was the snootiest cat Louis had ever come across. Louis loved him to bursting. 

He stretched, clambering awkwardly to his feet, and wrapped himself in one of the fleece blankets, taking the other one through for Harry. If he wasn't going to turn the heating on, then at least they could be as warm as possible otherwise.

Harry was on the phone when Louis, still half asleep, went clumsily into the living room. Harry looked exhausted but a little bit of the tension around his eyes had lessened, at least. Louis handed him the blanket and went to put the kettle on again; he must have slept for so long that the kettle he'd boiled earlier was stone cold. 

He made them both tea and carried it over to the sofa, sitting down next to Harry and arranging the other blanket over him. Humph, hating the idea of it being warm anywhere that he wasn't, took the opportunity to lob himself gracelessly into Harry's lap. Harry squeaked. 

"No, don't worry, the cat just landed on me," Harry said into his phone. "I'm fine."

Louis heard the murmur of a voice down the line. He rested his head back against the back of the sofa, yawning. He'd slept the best part of the day. He must have been absolutely fucking knackered.

"No, not my mum's cat," Harry said, and Louis stilled. "Why'd you remember my mum had a cat?" A pause. "Oh, right. You should follow my mum's Instagram. It's just full of pictures of the cats. No, it's, um, Louis's cat."

The room was so quiet Louis could hear the beat of his heart. He couldn't look at Harry. 

"Louis's my, um—" Harry glanced quickly at Louis, then back towards the TV. "He was my boyfriend." He waited a moment. "No, back, before. I didn't tell anyone about him."

It didn't stop hurting, just because Harry was saying it out loud for the first time for Louis to hear. Maybe it hurt more, Harry's dirty little secret laid bare. Except it was Louis that Harry was laying bare, stripping him off and throwing him to the vultures, and none of this was fair. 

"I know I should have told you," Harry went on. He paused. "I didn't think that at all. Of course I know you would have been supportive. I just didn't know who I was or how to be me. I thought it would just make sense one day, but it didn't. I had Louis at home and I loved him so much, and I met you lot and I didn't know how to make any of it mesh together. You thought one thing about me and it was another and I didn't know how to be all these people at once. I was going crazy."

Louis didn't want to hear that. He knew it, somewhere inside of him, knew it from what Harry had said as well as everything he knew of Harry from when they'd been together and afterwards, that Harry was fucked up. Harry was like one of those plants that only thrived where it felt secure; his team acting in what they thought was his best interests instead of what his best interests actually were, his friends who thought he was someone else, his mum and his sister who just wanted him to be himself – all of that just pulled him in different directions. Louis, who'd wanted Harry to be his boyfriend and to fuck the world. Stupid, selfish Louis, who hadn't been able to see their break up coming until it was too late. 

"Look," Harry went on. "Nick, look, can we talk more later? Louis's here now."

"You don't have to," Louis whispered, but Harry shook his head. 

"I won't do this again," Harry said. "I promise. No more secrets."

Louis wasn't sure if Harry was talking to him or his friend. 

He let out a breath, and concentrated on stroking Humph, feeling him purr beneath his touch as Harry finished his call. 

"Okay?" Louis asked, after a minute. 

"So-so," Harry said. "How'd you sleep?"

"Like I needed it," Louis said, and brought one sore knee up, leaning back. "Must have been knackered. Did you speak to your sister?"

Harry nodded. "Eventually. She didn't want to talk to me. But I spoke to my dad, and my step-dad, and then Gemma. Then Nick for a bit, but you heard that."

"Yeah." Louis rubbed his bruised knee. "Was it all all right?"

"Not really." Harry looked exhausted. "I'm building up to calling the record company. It's like, seven now. They'll have finished. Get to dread it until the morning, I suppose."

"It's Saturday tomorrow."

"I know," Harry said. "I've got an album out, though, and I'm to all intents and purposes missing. They'll be in."

Louis sighed. "I'm sorry about earlier. About laying into you. I don't know what I'm feeling or saying half the time."

"I deserved it." Harry's hand bumped against Louis's thigh. "Are you hungry? I could make us some dinner."

"Did I miss lunch? I think I missed lunch."

"I think so. I can't believe how out of it you were. Dead to the world when I went in."

"Must have been knackered." It had been ages since Louis had managed a proper sleep. He wasn't going to pretend that – however shaming and humiliating it was – knowing that he hadn't got the threat of impending eviction hanging over his head because of all the unpaid bills wasn't at least a little reassuring. 

"So, can I stay another night? Now that I'm facing up to my responsibilities?"

"You can stay. It was just that you had to stop hiding sometime."

"Yeah," Harry agreed after a minute. "Do you want me to make you some dinner?"

The back of Louis's hand brushed Harry's. "In a bit," he said. "Do you think we could just, like, sit here for a bit? Without it being weird?"

Harry waited a beat before replying. "Of course." 

Louis spent half the time angry with Harry and the other half desperately sorry for him, but neither of those things meant he didn’t love him all the time. "I told Rhoda McIntyre I was on your side," he said finally. "I told her I'd always be on your side."

"Oh, Lou," Harry said. He sounded a little choked up. "Fuck."

"Sometimes I still hate you," Louis said. "Sometimes it gets me in my chest, here, and it hurts so much I don't know what to do with it, but if it comes to you versus _The Sun_ , I'm always going to be on your side. Who you have sex with is your business. It's nobody else's. Doesn't matter if it's two guys together or ten."

"I still think it was just one after the other. And I don't want that. I don't want to not really remember. I don't want to be someone I'm trying to hide away. I need a new PR team."

"Yeah," Louis agreed. "They'll get you the right kind of interviews. The ones where you can talk about how trapped you've felt."

"I didn't with you."

"You did," Louis said softly. "With me you felt more trapped than anywhere else. That's why it all got fucked up." Just admitting it felt like he was tearing his chest open. 

"No," Harry said. "That's not true. It was everywhere else I felt trapped. I was lying everywhere else. I just got it wrong. I thought I wanted to be famous more than anything else, but I didn’t. I wanted to be who I was when I was with you when I was with everyone else. I just had no idea how to do any of that, or how I could have any of that when I couldn't even say I was gay out loud. My mum always told me to be proud of who I am and I don't know how that turned into me making such a gigantic fuck up of literally everything. I don't know how that turned into me hurting everyone and making all these decisions that were just wrong. I wasn't trapped with you. I was trapped everywhere else and I didn't know how to break free."

"That doesn't make it hurt any less."

"I know," Harry said. "But I wish it made you hate me a little bit less."

Louis let out a breath. "I don't hate you."

"But you don't forgive me either."

"No," Louis said finally. His hands were shaking and he didn't know why. "Not completely."

There was a pause. "Lou—"

"Shut up," Louis said, and when he reached for Harry's hand, he stared straight ahead, right at the damp patch on the wall opposite, and didn't let out a breath until Harry had laced his fingers with Louis's.

"What are we doing?" Harry asked after a minute. Louis's palm was sweating. So was Harry's.

"I've got no fucking idea," Louis said. "Trying to make it better?"

"Christ," Harry said, and when Louis leaned over to kiss him, Harry made a soft, desperate, choked-off sound in his throat and kissed him back.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's google searches: "whatever happened to Richard Fleeshman" "where do you buy books online in Sweden" "beef sweet chilli sauce recipe" "cats" (I wasn't adventurous). 
> 
> I don't really know how to tag what the tabloids are doing to Harry in this, so I've gone with harassment, but there is more discussion about what it feels like/means to have intimate photos of you stolen and shared without your consent in this chapter.

Louis couldn't help but reach for Harry, his hand cupping Harry's cheek as Harry kissed him back. His other hand was still laced with Harry's, and they both held on with grim determination even as Harry slid his other hand into Louis's hair. This was stupid, and irresponsible, and it was all twisted together inside his chest, the weight of carrying this secret for so long, the plaited stands of hurt and love and impotent rage that all came together to form the image of Harry he carried around with him. 

"I loved you," he said softly, hand still cupping Harry's cheek. "I loved you so much."

Harry let out a sound, painful and harsh. "I know," he said. "If you think I don't know what I gave up, Lou. If you think I don't know."

"All this time I wished I was enough." He kissed Harry's cheek, his thumb brushing over the uneven stubble along Harry's jaw. "I always wanted to be enough. Inside I always knew I wasn't going to be. I thought I could talk you round. I knew you weren't on board for that holiday. I knew you were trying to make excuses for me not to book it. But I thought if I had you there, you'd change your mind. You'd want me as much as I wanted you."

Harry's breath hitched, and his hand tightened in Louis's. "You were right," he said, and this time he was the one kissing Louis's cheek, the corner of his mouth, his eyes falling closed as he rested his forehead against Louis's. "That's why I couldn't go. That's why I left. I didn't want to change my mind. I didn't want you to know I loved you more than anything."

"You were such a coward," Louis told him, closing his eyes. "You broke my heart, and you couldn't even do it to my face. And you did it for what? To keep being famous?"

"I made the wrong choice. I made the wrong choice and I paid for it. I lost you. I'm still paying for it because I love you and you don't want me or trust me anymore, and because everything that happened afterwards, everyone that got hurt and everyone that's still getting hurt, it happened because I wasn't brave enough or clever enough to figure out what I wanted and be true to it. My mum said that she thought she brought me up to be better than this. Gemma said she was ashamed of me because of all the secrets. They're right. And I keep disappointing you."

Louis tried to shake his head, but Harry wouldn't let him. 

"No," he said. "I do. All this week I've just hidden. If I'd have been you, I would have been braver. You're the bravest person I've ever met."

"You had your privacy violated in the worst possible way," Louis told him, shutting him up by pressing his mouth to Harry's. It was effective but had its own side effects: Louis's heart was pounding again, loud in his ears. "Naked pictures, taken without your consent, and printed in the papers. Pictures of us stolen from your phone. That's awful. Lisa's been saying all week that it's abuse. She's been looking at those pictures of you every fucking day but it doesn't stop her saying it. You're allowed to want to run for the hills when you've had to deal with that. That's not _not_ being brave. That's being hurt." He tried to smile but he wanted to cry. "You're allowed to be hurt. You just can't keep hiding. Having sex with those boys wasn't wrong. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I feel dirty," Harry said softly, and he was holding on to Louis's hand so tightly that it hurt. "I feel like they took something from me."

"They did," Louis said. It had taken him days to figure out everything that he'd been thinking about Harry's outing, all of his anger and everything that he and Harry had been through clouding everything else. He felt worse about everything he'd said today too. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry it happened to you."

"Don't apologise to me for hurting you."

"I'm not," Louis said. "It's different. I'm telling you I'm sorry for the pictures. For the article."

Harry let out a breath. "What are we doing?"

"I don't know," Louis said. "What do you want to do?"

"Kiss you again," Harry said finally, his voice quiet. "I really want to kiss you again."

Louis let go of Harry's hand, ignoring his soft huff of disappointment, and scooped up a lazy Humph. "I'm sorry, baby," he told his meowing cat, "but you're going to have to be pretty and fluffy somewhere else for a bit."

Humph meowed again, and once he'd been deposited on the floor, went over to the corner to lay waste to his scratching post. 

Louis swallowed. "A perfect soundtrack, don't you think?"

Harry's smile was a little watery. "To what?"

"To this," Louis said, and he touched both of his hands to Harry's face. This time, Harry was ready for him as he leaned in, chin tilted up, and he met Louis's kiss with his own. 

Kissing Harry was never easy. Loving him was, in its own way. Kissing him just made Louis want more, want all of it, want all of him. He shifted a little, Harry's hands sliding into his hair. They'd done this so many times before, lazy kisses, heated kisses, all of them and more besides. It seemed like a million years ago. 

They kept on kissing, Humph still giving the scratching post his all. It made Louis laugh against Harry's mouth, and Harry's answering smile met his as they shifted a little closer, Louis pressing Harry back a bit until they pulled apart. 

"Can we…" Harry asked a little hesitantly, and it wasn't exactly clear what it was he was asking for, except for the way his thumbs moved in unison, a little gesture that clearly meant lie down. 

"Sofa's too small," Louis said. His heart pounded. "And I'm not having sex with you."

"I know," Harry said, way too quickly. "Just like—more of this?"

Louis waited a moment before nodding. "Come on, then," he said, and Harry was the one who stood up first, the one who held his hand out, the one who led Louis into the bedroom and down onto the bed. 

It was Louis who pulled the covers up over them though, both of them still in their clothes, and Louis who wrapped his arms around Harry's shoulders and tried not to hear the desperate way his breath caught as Harry pulled him into a hug, tight and breathless and hot. It was Louis who mouthed at Harry's jaw, at his throat, at his stubble as Harry tipped his head back, but it was Harry who slid his hands into Louis's hair and kept him there. It was the oddest, neediest kind of comfort, breathlessly kissing, feet tangled up under the covers but their hands not going below the neck. 

The two of them were so fragile, together and apart, and that just made it worse. It made Louis want it more, made him need it more. It made him touch Harry with kid gloves, made him gentle where he used to be rough. It made him careful. It made him so, so careful. 

In the end, he buried his face in Harry's neck. "I don't hate you," he said finally, his mouth pressed to Harry's skin. "How could I hate you?"

"Easily, I would have thought," Harry said, and his voice shook. He wrapped his arms around Louis's shoulders. "Can we fix this?"

"I don't know," Louis said softly. 

"Do you even want to?"

It took Louis a long time to nod his _yes_. 

~*~

They got up and cooked dinner after a while, Harry taking charge and Louis on chopping duty. Harry was marinating strips of beef in honey, soy sauce, garlic and chilli whilst Louis was supposed to be cutting up peppers and mushrooms and onion and pak choi. Up until the moment he'd been tossed the packet from the fridge, he'd had less than zero idea of what pak choi actually was. He wasn't entirely sure now, even though he was supposed to be chopping it. Mostly he was watching Harry, who was precise where Louis was untidy, and was careful when it came to following the recipe. 

Their whole relationship had happened inside, mostly in Harry's house, but sometimes in Louis's when his flatmate had been away. They'd spent a lot of time hanging out in Harry's kitchen, or his living room, or in his bedroom. It wasn't new. 

It just _felt_ new. It felt different. 

Louis hadn't let himself be intimate with anyone in a long time. Niall and Liam he kept close, but not that close. Begging them to help him find Humph had probably been the most he'd ever revealed to them. But this—just cooking, but doing it together, Harry following a recipe on his phone—it felt different. Quiet. Nice. 

In a couple of days—or a day, or two days, Louis had no idea—Harry would be gone. There was always a Harry-shaped hole in Louis's life, but over the past couple of years he'd been careful enough to box it up and ignore it. He wouldn't have the same freedom now. 

Harry caught him looking. "Get back to chopping," he said, going a little red. 

Louis had always liked making him blush. It made his stomach twist a little. "Fine," he grumbled, but he stuck his tongue out anyway. 

Harry leaned over and kissed his shoulder, and Louis should have put a stop to that. He should have drawn a line under kissing in his bed, said _enough_ and moved on. He needed to protect himself. He needed to be careful. 

He went back to chopping. 

~*~

They ate stir fried beef and vegetables and rice with a sweet chilli marinade in bowls on their laps in front of the TV. Humph, who liked human food a bit but liked annoying his humans much more, kept stalking up and down the coffee table and getting in the way of the TV. 

"I will banish you to the bedroom in a bit, you menace," Louis told him as severely as he could manage, which wasn't that severely. 

Humph meowed. 

"You have that perfectly revolting meat in gravy thing to finish, so don't look at Harry like you've never been fed. You get fed all the time, you sneaky thing. Pretending to guests that you're a poor, starving kitten that nobody loves."

Humph meowed again. Louis made a face and Humph jumped onto the sofa to take up the remains of the space between Louis and Harry, which wasn't very much. 

"Hullo," Harry said, as Humph made a concerted effort to fit into a very small space. "Don't want to miss out, do you?"

"Meow," said Humph. 

Louis rolled his eyes. "Menace," he said, but Humph just pressed his face against Louis's outstretched hand, and purred. 

"Best cat," Harry said, and Louis tried not to feel proud inside, but he couldn't help himself. 

~*~

Louis had slept the best part of the day already, so he expected to be awake for hours, but by the time Hot Fuzz was coming to an end on ITV2, he was yawning. 

"Sorry," he apologised. "I must be knackered."

"Same," Harry said. He hadn't slept the day away. He hid his yawn behind his hand. "Can I stay in with you?"

Louis had already dumped their plates by the sink earlier. There was only their blankets to drag back into the bedroom in an effort to keep themselves warm in bed. "Yeah," he said, trying to get Humph to move off the blankets. Humph looked reproachfully at both of them, then stalked off into the bedroom to get the best spot on the bed. 

Harry looked exhausted. 

"Come on," Louis said. "I'll move the cat for you."

Harry smiled sleepily at that. "I'll fit round the cat," he said. "Don't worry."

They ended up falling asleep, the three of them, Harry, Louis and Humph curled up round each other. Louis woke up with a tail in his face, Harry's hand in his, and a message on his phone from his mum that just said, _is that you in the sun again? Will you please ring me Louis im so worried and I love you so much xx_

Louis scrambled out of bed and into the living room, trying to get his old laptop booted up and his internet dongle online. It took ages to get it working, but when he got to _The Sun's_ home page he wished it had taken longer. 

_**HARRY'S MENTAL BREAKDOWN**_ , the headline said. _Friends and family are extremely worried about Harry Styles's reported breakdown. Missing for a week, has his secret sex shame been too much for pop star Harry to bear? By Rhoda McIntyre._

Louis clicked through to the article, heart pounding. 

_Friends and family of X Factor loser Harry Styles are "extremely worried" for his mental state after more details of Harry's sordid sex shame continue to come out. Harry, who hasn't been seen since humiliatingly falling out of a club drunk in London's Mayfair on Saturday night, has terrified friends and family after disappearing and refusing to get in contact despite desperate pleas to get in touch. "We've been so scared he'll do something stupid," a close friend of Harry's revealed. "His phone's been switched off and no one knows where he is. No one's seen him in a week. He's been on the edge for a while." Fans continue to voice their worry on Twitter, begging the former clean-cut pop star to let them know he's all right._

_[inset: tweet begging Harry not to hurt himself]_

_Harry, whose three-in-a-bed sordid hook ups with anonymous men were kept secret from even his closest friends, and the discovery of which has caused hundreds of his upcoming tour tickets to be returned by scandalised parents of his young fans, has shocked many in the music industry. "He's marketed as the clean-cut, boy next door you'd take home to your mum," one industry insider told us. "Those are the people who buy his music. Without them, and with the continuing revelations about Harry's secret life, I wouldn't be surprised if this meant the end of his career."_

_Harry's work ethic has to be called into question too. He was a no-show at interview after interview this week--_

"Louis?" Harry asked from the doorway, sleepily rubbing his eyes. Humph wove around his feet and took up residence by his food bowl. "What's up?"

"Oh god," Louis managed. He couldn't hide the article in time. "Harry, love. I'm so sorry." 

Louis watched in horror as the colour drained from Harry's face.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's google searches: "revenge porn laws" "cucumber crocodile sausage surprise" (there's no good way to segue between those two searches, in real life or in these notes) "mog the cat" "mog and bunny" (this book is the best book) and "kittens hugging toys" (literally my favourite google search ever). 
> 
> More discussion of intimate photos shared without consent in this chapter. No discussion of anyone harming themselves but the implication of the newspaper article is that Harry might have done - if you need more details then send me an ask.

"What does it say?" Harry asked, without moving from the doorway, colourless and scared. Humph meowed, but Louis ignored him. "What does it say this time?"

"I haven't finished it," Louis said, because Harry was already clearly on the edge of tears, and more than anything, Louis wanted to stop Harry feeling like this, right now. It wasn't like he could hide Harry away from what was in the newspaper, but if there was any way he could have lessened the blow, he'd have wanted to. 

"What about the bit you have read? I'll read it on my phone anyway."

Louis let out a breath. "They're saying… they're saying you might have done something stupid. Hurt yourself. That you haven't spoken to anyone and no one's seen you."

"I haven't," Harry said. "I haven't hurt myself. Hurt myself how?"

"I don't know." Rhoda McIntyre was the worst fucking human. 

"I wouldn't do that," Harry said, and even from the sofa Louis could see his hands were shaking. "I just ran away. I wouldn't do anything like that. Why are they saying I did?"

"I don't know," Louis said. He couldn't get his head round it. It wasn't the scandal and the sleeze Rhoda McIntyre had promised. It was different. He went back to the article, scrolling down. 

_He was a no-show at interview after interview this week with his PR team cancelling all his diary for the end of this week and next week too. With a new album just out and so little respect for the large amount of SYCO money behind Harry, are we seeing the end of Harry Styles and his post X Factor recording contract?_

He kept scrolling down. He wasn't interested in Rhoda ripping Harry and his career to shreds. He wanted to know where he came in. 

Louis found himself two thirds of the way down the page, last week's picture of Louis, Harry and Humph next to a new one, Louis and Harry together again. Louis hadn't seen this picture in a very long time, and this one was intimate in a way the other one only pretended to be. They were both naked in this one, although the angle of the camera and the positioning of Harry's hand only meant there was a glimpse of Harry's pubes at the bottom of the picture. Louis was standing behind him, one arm wrapped around Harry's waist, the other cupping Harry's face and angling him back for a kiss, Harry holding the phone out and getting a picture without looking. 

They'd spent the whole day in bed that day. Harry probably had come stains on his stomach. Luckily the lighting in the picture was bad enough that Louis couldn't make it out on the screen, and Louis's face was half in shadow, but it felt like someone had hit him in the stomach. That was private, and it was Harry's picture and their moment and it didn't belong to the fucking tabloid press. It didn't belong to Rhoda McIntyre and it didn't belong to the fucking general public, and it didn't belong to Louis's _mum_ , who had to deal with seeing her son in the fucking newspaper. It had belonged to that beautiful fucking day where they'd loved each other and been alone and happy together. 

Under the pictures, the caption said, _the sordid secret sex life that Harry Styles never wanted us to see._

There was nothing fucking sordid about Harry having sex with him. Nothing. He scrolled down with a shaking hand to see if there was anything else, but there wasn't anything with his face on. At least that was a positive—

The last line of the article said, _For more Harry Styles Sex Scandal revelations, buy our sister publication, The Sun on Sunday. Exclusive pictures and article tomorrow._

Harry made a soft, choking noise. "No," he said, and Louis hadn't known he was reading over his shoulder. "No, no, no. I can't. Please. I can't do this again." 

Louis shoved the laptop down onto the coffee table. "Haz," he said urgently, because Harry was crying, clutching the back of the sofa like his legs might give out. 

"It's not fair. It's not fair. Why won't they leave me alone?"

"I don't know," Louis said. "I don't fucking know, and I'm so sorry."

"I can't do it," Harry said, and his hands were shaking. "I don't want to go back."

Louis shook his head. Fire burned inside of him, fury and fear and anger and terror all mixed together. "No, Harry. No." He tried to take Harry's hand but Harry wrapped his arms around himself instead, backing into the kitchen cabinet and sliding down onto the floor. Louis didn't get there in time to stop him. "You're not giving in," Louis told him, going down onto his bruised knees. "I won't let you."

"I hate this," Harry said. "Everyone's going to have seen. People are going to be talking about me. That picture of me and you. Everyone worried. I've made everyone worry."

No," Louis said, taking Harry's hand. They were so very cold. "No, babe. You're not letting them fucking win. Rhoda McIntyre's the worst fucking human. That paper is a cunt. You've got nothing to be ashamed of."

"I have," Harry said, and tears ran down his face unchecked. "I did everything wrong."

"Christ." Louis wrapped his arms around Harry's shoulders, pulling him in. Harry was sobbing into Louis's hoodie, hands clutching at Louis's sleeves. Even Humph couldn't find a way in to nestle against Harry's chest, his front paws on Harry's thigh. "Don't cry, lovely. Don't cry because of that stupid dog shit newspaper. Please don't cry."

He wasn't entirely sure that Harry knew how to stop. All he could do was rub Harry's back and hold on. 

"What am I going to do?" Harry asked finally, still clutching him. His shoulders shook. "I don't know what to do."

Louis closed his eyes. "Get through it," he said finally, Harry's hair muffling his words. "You just… put one foot in front of the other until you're out the other side."

"I'm not as strong as you."

Louis smiled at that. It hurt. "I'm not as strong as all that. I've just got better at pretending. You need to stand up and be you. You need to stand up when you fall down, even when it feels like you're dying inside." Even when all you were standing up for was a shit flat and a cat to come home to. Even when it hurt. 

Harry rubbed his nose against Louis's hoodie. It was probably snotty. Fuck, Louis really could sell this shit on eBay and pay off next month's electricity bill. 

"Fuck," Harry said softly. His breath hitched. "I can't do this."

Louis kissed his temple. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, babe, but you've got to. You've got to."

Harry burrowed closer, hiding his face in Louis's chest, and the only thing Louis could do was hold on.

~*~

Harry was in the shower when Louis rang Willie back. He'd loaned Humph to Harry for the duration of his shower, and Louis hoped that Harry was enjoying the spectacle of being stared at, unblinking, by a cat with no sense of boundaries. 

"I've seen today's paper," Willie said, after the awkwardness of introductions was done with, "and Niall showed me last week's. Is that what you want to talk about? Because revenge porn isn't my area, but I don't think _The Sun_ can swing this as being in the public interest."

Louis stilled. "What? No. I mean. Christ, it's not porn though, is it? No one's dick is out in those pictures."

"They're intimate pictures posted without your consent," Willie said. "We might have a case. How are you fixed for first thing Monday morning? Niall said you work, but I think your office isn't that far from mine, can you make a seven thirty meeting?"

"I've got a non-disclosure agreement," Louis said softly. "It wasn't about the pictures. I need you to explain what the agreement means. I'm not thick. I just don't speak lawyer."

"Don't sign it," Willie said. "We'll go through it on Monday."

"I signed it two years ago. I could just never afford a lawyer. I didn't have much choice about signing it."

Willie let out a breath. "Make it seven. Niall says you're partial to a McDonalds. I'll pick up breakfast on the way. Bring whatever papers you've got. It's not my area of specialism but I'll try, all right?"

"How much is this going to cost? It's not—" he tailed off. "Harry says he'll pay, but he might be gone by then and I don't know if I can afford this."

"Monday's on the house," Willie said. "We'll talk about it then. I'll text you the address of my office, all right?"

Louis rubbed his forehead. "All right. Thanks."

"No problem. You come highly vouched for. My cousin's a good judge of character."

"Yeah," Louis said. "He's a good lad."

After he put the phone down, credit inching down towards zero again, he made tea and put food out for the cat, and slumped down on the sofa to re-read the article. _The Sun_ really had its knives out for Harry, and Harry might have made some shit choices in his life, but nothing that deserved this kind of public, national embarrassment.

"Has it magically disappeared from the internet?" Harry asked, a few minutes later. He was bundled up in one of Louis's hoodies and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. Louis owned more pairs of Primark fluffy socks than perhaps he should, and the ones Harry were wearing had penguin faces on the toes and a little orange beak. His hair was pulled back from his face in a damp bun. 

"No," Louis said. "I made tea."

Harry came to sit down next to him, curling into Louis's side. Louis slid an arm around him and kissed the top of his head. "I don't think I can do this."

"You can. Don't let the bastards fucking grind you down."

"I'm all ground down already. Did you ever read about Flat Stanley at school? I'm like Flat Harry."

Louis punched him in the arm. "Seem pretty 3D to me."

Harry tried for a smile. It wavered at the edges. "God, Lou. What am I going to do?"

Louis shrugged. "What do you want to do?"

"Hide in a corner and never come out. Do you reckon I can do that? Tell people I'm all right and still manage to hide?"

Louis took a sip of his tea. "I reckon you can tell people you're all right," he said finally. "That'll shut them up, right? _The_ fucking _Sun_?"

Harry blinked. "Should do."

~*~

The Instagram picture was one of Harry's hand spread out flat, and Humph's paw right in the middle of Harry's palm, a kitten high five done down low. He'd started to caption it _old friends new friends_. They'd gone with Instagram because apparently there wasn't an upper character limit as low as on Twitter, and because Instagram was the one account Harry had that wasn't also accessed by his PR team. Louis didn't have an Instagram, so he hadn't been able to participate much in that decision. He barely had a Twitter. 

"Are you writing what we decided?" Louis asked. There was a scribbled back of an envelope resting on the sofa in between them, but it was mostly covered by a cat. Harry didn't appear to feel the need to move Humph on. 

Harry shrugged, and didn't look up from his laptop. He'd paired his phone with his Macbook and was running the internet that way, which was great as Louis was pretty much out of internet and didn't have the money to buy another top-up. "I'm sorry if you've been worried," he read out, still typing. "I didn't expect to come out this way and I didn't expect to come out at this point. I always knew I would have to come out sometime but I wanted it to be when I was ready and when I was sure about who I was. I never wanted to come out because of stolen, private photos that were never meant to be shared. I definitely never wanted to come out because of photos that were taken without my consent and without my knowledge." He let out a breath. "How am I supposed to say people shouldn't worry about me hurting myself?"

Humph was definitely sat on that bit of the envelope, but they hadn't exactly got an answer for that, either. 

"Don't know," Louis said. "Maybe you've already said it at the beginning. Just say you'll be back but you needed a break?"

"Yeah, all right. I'll put that in. I'm signing it off, _love to you all, Harry_. Is that okay?"

"It's your message," Louis said. "Are you happy with it?"

Harry sighed. "I feel like I started off more confident than this, you know. Like, when I auditioned. I thought I could take over the world. I was figuring myself out, I was going to sing, it was great. I don't know what went wrong. I don't know how I ended up being so scared of who I was, and, like, not having a fucking clue what I was doing or why. I feel like I'm always trying to go in different directions and I just want to go in one, and I don't know how to find it. I don't know how I keep getting it wrong."

Louis kept thinking about that picture of him and Harry in the paper, the one where they'd been happy and Louis had been loved and they'd been together. He kept trying to shove it down, push it out of the way, pretend he didn't remember what it felt like to have the freedom to touch, the option to be touched, the reciprocal arrangement to kiss and be kissed. It had come with a million other drawbacks, _dirty little secret_ etching itself on his heart like Harry Potter's _I must not tell lies_ , but it didn't erase the memory. He'd been loved. It had hurt, looking back, two years of being alone and mounting debts and Humph taking all of the space he had for loving anything or anyone, but there, cradled in the very darkest corner of his heart, was the knowledge that someone had chosen to love him once. Not out of necessity or burdened with him because of blood, but because of him and who he was. It hadn't ended well, but for that moment, the one Harry had captured, it had been perfect.

That had been his, that memory, and now it was in the fucking newspaper with a label that said _sordid_. 

"Kiss me," Louis said softly, after Harry pressed post and shut the lid of his laptop. "Will you just kiss me?"

Harry's hands shook as he put the laptop down on top of Louis's on the coffee table. He reached for Louis, hands to his cheeks, and pressed his mouth to Louis's. He licked his way into Louis's mouth, and Louis trembled with it, with everything he was keeping inside, everything this stupid fucking newspaper article and the one before it had taken from him. He circled Harry's wrists with his hands and stroked his thumb over Harry's pulse. He kissed him. 

It didn't feel real. They'd been trapped in this flat for so long that it was becoming fantasy again, this weird double life where the two of them only existed outside of reality, and Louis knew how this story ended. He'd lived it once already.

Harry pulled back. "I need to phone and tell them I need a new PR team," he said. "I need to do it before I lose my nerve."

Christ. "Harry—"

"I'm standing up again," Harry told him softly, and Louis wanted to cry. "Will you hold my hand while I call them?"

Louis nodded, and Harry reached for his phone. 

"And afterwards," Harry went on, "I want to get really, really drunk. Will you do that with me too?"

Louis slid his hand into Harry's. "Yeah," he said, and refused to think past this moment, right here, right now, and the way his heart pounded. "All right. You're on."


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I got sick, and then I got sick some more. Rubbish. Every day was a new and exciting variation in being ill. 
> 
> Some things I googled during the break: 
> 
> aye-aye animal  
> blobfish  
> piglet squid

Harry's phone call to his record company lasted over an hour. Louis lasted for about half of that, holding out until after Harry had asked for new PR representation and had it agreed, until after Harry had agreed to be in London on Monday for a proper, face to face meeting where he'd meet his new PR team. Louis had even held out to the part of the conversation where Harry hesitantly asked how many people had returned their tickets to his upcoming tour, but when it got to the part where Harry took the phone off speaker and started talking about newspaper articles whilst sending hesitant glances towards Louis, even the nosiest part of him couldn't stay sitting there and listening. He'd plastered on a smile, scooped up Humph, and gone to hide in the bedroom to try and pack the fractured shards of his heart back into something functional and less painful. 

He'd always known that Harry was leaving. He'd always known that it would be soon. He'd always known that – regardless of how much he'd tried – it was going to hurt. 

He just hadn't really managed to match that with him leaving _tomorrow_. 

"Just you and me again, huh, Sir Kittington?" he said carefully, lifting Humph up over his head and then into a fluffy, grumpy hug. "I hope you're not going to mind being left alone all day again too much. Maybe Harry's been stopping you having all your normal adventures, huh? Maybe you're itching for him to leave as much as I am, right?" 

Humph meowed, begging to be put down, and Louis let him curl up in his lap, turning round in a circle first before finding the best place to settle. 

There were three new books on the bedside table that Louis had picked up from the hospice charity shop when he was out buying orange juice and ibuprofen, still in their blue and white striped bag. There wasn't that much that was any good in that shop – all the good stuff went to the British Heart Foundation on the high street, because whoever looked after this shop smoked in the back and everything smelled like a pack of Benson and Hedges – but it sold things like mismatched glasses and plates and forks for 25p each. Louis wouldn't have a kitchen if it hadn't been for him eking out the odd couple of quid in there and coming back with a bowl or a mug or a couple of tumblers. He'd got his sheets there too, and his towels. It said something when you were too fucking poor for the pound shop.

He'd got the books for Harry, really, mindful of his promise to bring back something for him to read, and even though his mind had been on Rhoda McIntyre and on making Harry stand on his own two feet, he hadn't been able to walk by without at least checking the basket out the front of the shop that had a handwritten sign that said _3 books for 50p!!!_

Beggars really couldn't be choosers, and he'd come back with a romance novel set in a hospital and written in the eighties about a doctor who fell in love with a quiet nurse, a thriller from the nineties about the internet called _The Net Tightens_ , and a battered teen novel about a girl who didn't fit in and the boy who did. 

At least he'd have something to read next week when Harry was gone. 

Louis started the hospital romance novel and tried not to listen through two closed doors for Harry's side of the record company conversation. He enjoyed reading more than he had done once, but mostly he did it because he was bored and broke and he could sit by the radiator in the library of a weekend and not freeze to death. 

Harry burst in half an hour later with his laptop open, the screen pointing towards Louis. 

There was a headline there, a tabloid one. 

It said, _**HARRY'S KEPT BOY**_. 

"What's that?" Louis asked. He'd dropped his book down onto the bed next to him, his heart already pounding. "What the fuck is that?"

Harry looked pale. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so fucking sorry."

"What is it?"

"It's going to be the front cover of tomorrow's _Sun on Sunday_. They just told me."

"What's it mean?" Louis asked, as carefully as he could when he was fairly sure his world was collapsing down around his ears. Humph, who'd gone to sleep in Louis's lap like a portable, purring blanket, dug his claws into Louis's thighs as Louis tried to reach for the computer. "Who have you been keeping? What's that even mean?"

Harry swallowed. "They're talking about you," and his voice shook. He wouldn't let Louis have his computer. "They're saying I paid you."

"Paid me for what?"

Harry scrolled down so more than just _Harry's kept boy_ was visible on screen. Underneath it said, _Sensational: the boy Harry Styles PAID for sex for a whole year._

"Sex," Harry said, and the bottom carefully and irrevocably dropped out of Louis's world. 

~*~

Louis sat fully clothed in the bath with his cat on his lap and the door locked between him and Harry. 

"Please," Harry was saying, trying the door handle. "Please, Louis. I'm so sorry. The lawyers are trying to stop it. Brian thinks this isn't the article they really want to print. It's a bargaining tool."

"I wish I'd never met you," Louis said. "I wish I'd stayed with my mates in that fucking stupid pub and had that fucking stupid argument instead of coming to X Factor that night. Have you any fucking idea of how much I've given up for you?"

"Yes. Yes, fuck. Louis. Please."

"I had mates, you know. Do you think I still had them when I dumped them in the shit with the lease on our flat? Cos I didn't, you know. I had a lease. It had nine months left on it, and I just walked out and came to London because you said _jump_ and I said _how fucking high_ and _I don't care who I hurt_. You think things are still all right with my mum and my step dad after they had to pay to get me out of that lease? They were divorcing and my family was in a fucking mess and I don't know where they got that money from, but they did, and I repaid them by not fucking telling them anything about my life, and never giving them the money back."

"Louis, please." Harry was crying. "It's not my fault they're printing this."

"It's not fucking mine," Louis snapped. He buried his face in Humph's fur. Humph meowed. 

"I love you," Harry said. 

"What the fuck does that matter? It wasn't enough to stop you leaving me last time."

"They're trying to stop it," Harry said after a minute. "They're trying to get an injunction or something."

"It's not fucking true, though," Louis said. "How can they print something that's not true? You never paid me for sex. You think I'd be this fucking poor if you'd paid me?"

"It's defamation. It's libel. They can't print it. They know I'll sue."

Louis stroked his cat. "You're ruining my life," he said finally. "Every time I let you in just a little bit, you ruin another huge corner of my life. And now you're ruining everything."

"I'm sorry," Harry said again. "I'm so sorry."

"If they print that, then everyone's going to think I'm a prostitute. My mum's going to think that. My friends are going to think that. Everyone at work's going to think that. I'm not going to have anything left."

"You'll have me."

"No," Louis said. "I won't. You've got to be in London on Monday. You think I don't know you're not coming back? You've never come back for me. I'm what you run from. You don't run to me. You don't even take me out of the fucking house."

"You'll have me," Harry said softly. "You will always, always have me."

"No," Louis said. He wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, determined not to show for a second that he was crying. "Because I don't want you. I don't want you."

Even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. He'd tried and tried, telling himself he didn't want this, didn't want Harry, didn’t want to go back to how things were. It was better this way, better just the two of them, him and Humph and a life that trudged inevitably onwards but just kept getting harder. He got through every day and then he got through the next one but it just kept getting harder. 

He pretended all the time. He'd pretended for so long he couldn't remember the last time he hadn't. 

The only time he hadn't was when he'd kissed Harry, but even then he hadn't told the truth about how he was feeling. Harry, this tiny glimpse of how things might have been, the only time he'd felt a thread of a future that wasn't just dark. Harry, who'd left him and broken his heart. 

Christ. 

"Haz?"

"I'm going to be here for you," Harry said after a minute. He sounded tearful. "If they print this, I'm going to be here for you. I'm going to tell everyone it's a lie. I'm going to tell everyone at your work, I'm going to tell everyone in your family, I'm going to tell all of your friends."

"There's only Niall and Liam. There isn't anyone else."

"I'll tell them doubly hard," Harry said. "I'll tell Humph a thousand times. I'll make sure that everyone knows that this isn't true."

Louis hugged Humph harder. He meowed in a complainy sort of a way. "My cat already knows."

"I know he knows. I don't think it hurts to tell him over again."

"Haz," Louis said again, quieter this time. "It's not fucking fair."

It was a minute before Harry spoke again. "I know," he said finally. "I know, and I'm sorry. Will you let me in?"

Louis climbed awkwardly out of the bath, Humph still cradled against his chest, and unlocked the bathroom door. 

Harry tried to smile. "You all right?"

"No," Louis said. "Why do I always want to kiss you, even when you're ruining my life?"

Harry's shoulder twitched. "I always want to kiss you. Regardless of what's going on in my life."

Louis huffed a laugh. It hurt. "Why'd they hate you so much? They got beef with Simon Cowell, or what?"

"Probably. It's an option. Maybe they just really don't like my hair." 

Nothing about this was funny. Louis's reputation hung in the balance, his whole life dangling over a precipice and he couldn't fucking do anything to stop it. "You have got abnormally large feet. Could be that."

"I do." He paused. "Maybe they're just homophobic dickheads with nothing better to do than ruin people's lives. I won't let them, you know. I won't let them lie about you."

"I don't know if you can stop them." Louis kissed the top of Humph's head. 

Harry shrugged. It looked like he was trembling. "Maybe I can't," he said finally. "But I can stand up for you."

"Haz—"

"I'll stand up for you. I didn't do it before but I can do it now. It doesn't matter if you don't want me. I'm not doing it for that. I'm going to do it anyway."

Louis's gaze swam. He ducked his head. "It's not fair."

"No," Harry said, and he was still clutching his laptop, his face tearstained and tired. He didn't try and reach for Louis, and Louis didn't try and reach for him. "It's not. But you're going to have to face it by yourself. You're not on your own."

"What's it going to mean for your career?"

Harry tilted his chin up. "I don't know. Probably nothing good."

"What did they say?"

"That the lawyers are working on it. The article today was to get me out of hiding. It worked."

"They want to bury you."

"I know," Harry said. "I've still got to sit tight and wait to hear from the lawyers."

"You're not on your own either."

Harry looked at him. "I am," he said finally. "But I deserve it. You don't."

Neither of them deserved this. Harry deserved a lot of things, but he didn't deserve this. 

"I got you some books," Louis said. "Three for 50p. Forgot to say earlier."

Harry's shoulders sagged. "Louis."

"Humph likes being read to," Louis said, because his fingers itched for something, and he couldn't put a name to what. Anger and fear and love and desperation swam beneath his skin, confusing everything. He was so close to losing what little he had left. He was so close to losing Harry, and that had always been inevitable, but it didn't mean it wasn’t going to hurt. 

"Yeah? And what about you? Do you like being read to?"

Louis liked nothing of the sort. He wanted Harry and _The Sun_ and lawyers and record companies a million miles away from him. "Don't know," he said finally. "No one ever has."

"Let me, then."

"What the fuck are we doing?"

Harry shrugged again. "Holding on," he said softly, and reached out a hand. "Waiting for the sky to fall."

It already was, Louis thought, staring down at Harry's hand. It already fucking was.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today I didn't eat a pizza that promised "wild broccoli" as a topping because it turns out I'm only comfortable eating the domesticated variety, but what I did do instead was a) not notice that the director was hot-desking in my office and instead announced to the entire room that the ladies loos smelled like fish paste, and then b) spent some quality time explaining why the chip museum in Bruges was my favourite museum ever and that their fifteen minute video "From Potato to Fry" was embedded in my heart and would remain so ever-more. 
> 
> Spending a day with me is a BLAST, chaps, a BLAST.

"When are you leaving?" Louis asked, a while or so later. He'd brought them both cups of tea, Harry catching up on the first chapter of the hospital romance novel while Louis waited for the kettle to boil. 

"Louis—"

"You've got meetings in London," Louis said, making space on the bedside table for their cups before pulling back the blankets. The bed was the warmest part of the flat, so it made sense to be in there as much as possible. He wrapped one of the blankets round his shoulders, and passed the other one to Harry to do the same with, pulling the duvet up and over them both. Humph padded carefully into the room, but instead of heading for the bed, he headed for the top of the wardrobe, where he could survey his kingdom from a dusty perch. "Let's do us both a favour and not pretend you're not going."

Harry took the cup of tea Louis was offering, cupping it in his hands, the book resting face down against his thighs. "Monday morning," he said finally. "I've got a ten a.m. meeting so they're sending a car at four to make sure I'm there."

"Four. Fuck. That's early."

"It was either that or tomorrow night." He blew on his tea, drawing his knees up a little. "I didn't want to go before I had to."

Louis nodded. Humph was licking his paws on top of the wardrobe. "Are you going to be in trouble? For skiving off everything this week?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "I think there's an hour or so put aside in the morning just to yell at me."

"Haz—"

"Pretty sure they've got enough to drop me, to be honest," Harry said, not letting Louis finish. "I don't think they will. I mean. They probably will. Just not now. That'd be letting _The Sun_ win. They'll just do it later. Once the next single's tanked and the album's gone."

"You were number one, though. Lisa told me when she was listening to the chart show at work."

Harry made a face. "Not any more," he said. "It's all right. Don't look at me like that. Don't look at me like you're sorry for me."

Louis let out a breath. "You like dick. It's not a crime."

"No," Harry agreed, putting his tea down on the floor by the bed. "But lying about it isn’t very nice. Lying about you wasn't either. Keeping it from everyone and pretending to be something I wasn't. Hurting you. Don't you think, like, this is kind of me getting my just desserts? Because I was you, I'd think, fuck, yeah. About fucking time."

"Sounds like something I'd say." Louis put his tea down on the bedside table again and rested his cheek against his knees. "Doesn't mean I'd be right."

"Wouldn't it?" Harry's face was flushed. He blinked, looking away. "When people lie, they deserve to get found out. You deserve to get punished."

"Do I deserve it?" Louis asked. "Because if that gets printed, it's my life that's ruined."

Harry's face crumpled. "You're collateral damage," he said. "To everyone else, you're collateral damage. You only mean everything to me."

Louis looked away at that. He'd always known he wasn't worth as much as Harry. Now he was about to get it confirmed in a national fucking newspaper. Just a name. Just a meaningless name. 

"I'd do anything to protect you," Harry said. It sounded like a sob was caught in his throat. "Anything I could, I swear."

"I loved you so much. I gave up everything for you." Louis wrapped his arms around his knees, staring away from Harry and at the wardrobe door instead. Humph gave a lazy yawn and jumped down onto the shelves and then the drawers and then the floor before wandering over to stick his nose into Louis's business. He batted his little cold nose against Louis's fingers. "I wanted it to be enough."

Harry made a soft, choked noise. "If I could do it all over again --"

"You'd do what? Figure yourself out quicker? Know what was going on in your head earlier? It doesn't fucking happen like that."

"I can't change it," Harry said. "I wish I could but I can't. I know you don't want me, but I'm going to do what you said. I'm going to stand up for you."

"I said stand up in general. I didn't mean for me. I meant for you."

Harry laughed at that. It sounded painful. "I can't do it for me," he said. "I want to just hide until it goes away. The only reason I'm going back is because of you."

Louis buried his face in his hands. "Great," he said, without looking up. "Everything I do, it ends up with you leaving. All I do is send you away."

Harry slid an arm around Louis's shoulders, and hid his face in Louis's neck. "Tell me what the right thing to do is," he said, breath hitching, mouth pressed to Louis's skin. "Tell me and I'll do it. Tell me how I can make it right."

Louis wasn't going to fucking cry. He wasn't. "Read me that fucking story," he said finally, because there wasn't anything else to do. It was cold and it was raining and his knees still ached and his heart fucking hurt. Tomorrow he might or might not be revealed as the kind of boy you could keep for sex and a hand-out, and the day after that he'd have to go into work, and come home to an empty flat and a cat that needed him more than any human ever would. He was collateral fucking damage, a name that meant nothing. A weapon. His worth measured in somebody else's secrets. "Tell me a story."

Harry breathed softly into Louis's skin. "I want to protect you."

Louis waited the longest minute before replying. "I know," he said quietly, and Harry made a strange, desperate kind of a noise before pulling away and reaching for the book. "I know."

~*~

The phone call came at half past eight, when they'd just started watching _Brooklyn Nine-Nine_ on Harry's laptop. He only had three episodes downloaded and Louis didn't know who anyone was, but Harry had read out five chapters of quiet nurse Sara Macbride falling in love with the stoic Dr Tom Kirkby at their little hospital in the north of Scotland, and his voice had started to get rough towards the end. Louis had ended up curled in against his side with Humph in between them, Harry's gruff voice a slow, gentle reminder that they weren't going to get a happy ending. 

Harry took a deep breath, closed the lid of his laptop, and answered his phone. Louis, unable to bear listening in when it was his life they were talking about, crawled out of bed to go for a piss and make them both another cup of tea. They'd lived on tea, the last few hours. Tea, and a toast break, and a bit in the middle where they'd eaten the majority of a packet of Tesco value Nice biscuits and dropped crumbs on Humph, who'd complained by meowing and stalking away. 

The rest of the flat was freezing, and Louis wrapped his arms around himself as the kettle boiled. They should eat something proper, but he didn't want to make anything. He didn't want to do anything other than not think about tomorrow, about the promised Sunday story, the black and white vow that there was a story coming tomorrow whether it was the one they'd been promised or not. His heart pounded. He'd felt sick for the whole of the afternoon, like stress was eating away at him and there wasn't a way through. 

Except that was the thing: there always was a way through. Even standing still, time moved on, and at some point, he had to put one foot in front of the other. It was just that sometimes, when he got to the other side, it was fucking worse. It just always meant more pretending. More pretending that everything was okay, that he was okay, that he wasn't fucking alone and hadn't let everyone down. 

He was so, so tired of pretending. 

He poured water onto the teabags, then slid carefully down until he was sitting on the floor, knees up to his chest, back to the kitchen cabinets. 

Humph wandered over and sat on Louis's feet so he could lick his paws. 

Louis started to cry. He hid his face in his hands, and cried out of sheer frustration, out of desperation and loneliness and exhaustion and everything in between. Because it was cold, because he only had food in his cupboards because of Harry's misplaced generosity, because he didn't know how to stop all that debt happening again, because he was by himself and he didn't work by himself. Because he fucked up friendships and messed up families and because he had Niall and Liam and he was too scared to let them in. Because he missed his mum so much it hurt. Because he loved Harry fucking Styles and no amount of pretending was going to wish it away again. 

Because his heart fucking ached and he was so tired of being scared all the fucking time, and because maybe Humph was better off with someone who could afford to buy him cat treats and little fuzzy fish on strings for him to play with. 

Because Louis wasn't fucking good enough and he never fucking had been, and all he could ever hope to be was collateral damage in a fight he didn't know the rules to, and it was too fucking much and he was _done_. He was done, but he didn't know how to make it all stop. 

He knocked his head back against the cupboard door, and wept. 

~*~

Harry came to find him after a while, going down on his knees and wrapping his arms around Louis's shaking shoulders. 

"Oh god," Harry said, pulling him close. "Louis, babe, Louis."

"Make it stop," Louis begged, clutching at him, fingers catching in his hoodie. He hid his face in Harry's shoulder, sobs catching at his skin, tearing at his throat. "Please make it stop."

Harry stroked his hand into Louis's hair. "Don't cry," he said. "Just, fuck. I love you. Please don’t cry."

"I'm so alone," Louis managed, and admitting it made him feel like he was tearing his chest in two just to let Harry in. "I'm always alone."

"You're never alone," Harry said, pulling him even closer, mouth pressed to Louis's hair, kissing the top of his head, his hair, his forehead. It was like he was trying to pull Louis inside of him, and Louis wanted to be taken, wanted to crawl inside and give up trying to fight and let someone else breathe for him. "You've always got me."

Louis shook his head. He was probably leaving fingertip bruises on Harry's arms. He couldn't breathe properly, desperately trying to swallow down a sob. "I love you," he said. "I love you and you're going to leave all over again."

Harry pulled Louis even closer. "They're not printing it," he said, voice catching. He kissed Louis's forehead again, his hand in Louis's hair. "It's going to have your name in it, but it's going to be _Harry's Secret Boyfriend_ instead." He was shaking, or Louis was shaking, Louis couldn't tell. He couldn't stop crying. "You're going to be okay. I promise. I promise, Lou. I love you and I promise."

Louis couldn't believe that. It was never okay. He wrapped his arms around Harry's neck and clung on, trembling in his arms, and it hurt. _You're leaving_ , he thought, but he couldn't say it out loud. "Promise me they're not printing it."

"The lawyers promised me." He kept running his hand up and down Louis's back, shushing him, trying to calm him down. 

It didn't work. Louis wasn't sure he'd ever be okay again. 

Louis slid his hands under Harry's hoodie, trying to find bare skin. His hands were cold and Harry's skin was warm and Harry trembled at his touch. 

"Lou—" his voice broke. 

Louis shook his head. He kept his hands where they were, cold in the small of Harry's back, his jumper rucked up so that Harry's stomach was on show. "Do you want this?" 

Harry stilled. His hands shook. "Of course I do. I love you."

Louis let go then, Harry's jumper half sliding back down. Louis wiped his nose and his eyes on his sleeve, then pulled his hoodie and his Primark long-sleeved top over his head until he was half-naked and shivering on his kitchen floor. 

"Louis."

"I want to go to bed," Louis said, as steadily as he could when he'd been crying his eyes out. "I want to go to bed with you." He wondered if his eyes said _make it stop hurting_ as loudly as his heart was shouting it. He didn't drop his gaze. 

"You'll catch your death," Harry said, "sitting out here half naked." He was trembling too, top rucked up, cheeks flushed. 

"Well, then," Louis said. He swallowed. "Please, Harry. Just, please." He welled up again, looking away. "I don't ask you for much."

Harry made a soft sound in his throat. "Come here and get warm," he said finally, and when he got to his feet, Louis followed, stumbling into his arms and burying his face in Harry's top. 

When Harry led him into the bedroom, Louis followed, his heart pounding, but he didn't let go of Harry's hand.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL. Today I played my boss an audiobook of a terrifying American dude reading erotica that i'd written, accidentally planned and achieved a fake girlfriend, and googled "what can you use instead of lube". I also watched a fucking terrible, borderline xenophobic, send-your-old-phone-to-us-and-get-a-whopping-60p-for-it advert that someone at work had written in a past life, explained that tonight I was going to be writing porn, and got excited about my dinner plans for tomorrow that can be summed up, basically, as CUSTARD FOR DINNER DAY. 
> 
> And that's what you missed today. Oh, except for the thread where people talked about using Crisco for lube. And mayonnaise. And shampoo. And yogurt. Apparently plain yogurt is great, by the way. The article suggest avoiding using a Muller Light. The fact that someone also had to warn against using mustard as it destroys condoms quite strongly suggests that someone has once tried using mustard as lube and to that person, oh god, no. 
> 
> I have also been on poundworld.com, poundshop.com, and poundland.com to see if they stock lube. They don't appear to, unless you want to use a WD40 rip off, which you probably don't. They do do a nice range of extra value condoms, though. 
> 
> So here ends today's lesson: don't use a muller light, WD40, or mustard on your dick. Take note, Louis Tomlinson, take note.

It was slightly warmer in the bedroom than it had been out in the kitchen, but Louis was still shivering as he closed the door behind them, trying to ignore the insulted meow from Humph at being shut out. He demanded attention just as much as Louis did, which was potentially why they were perfect for each other.

"You sure?" Harry asked, leading him over to the bed. 

Louis nodded, heart pounding. Humph meowed pitifully from the other side of the door, and Louis refused to look back. "I'm sure."

Harry waited a moment too long before he reached for the hem of his hoodie, pulling it up and over his head. His t-shirt followed, and it wasn't like Harry hadn't got changed in Louis's space over the course of the last week, but he hadn't been on display just for Louis, and it felt like seeing him for the first time all over again. He was bigger than he had been a couple of years ago, broader and stronger and more tattooed. Louis had seen the butterfly before, felt the tremble of Harry's breath beneath his fingertips as he'd traced the outline of it just after he'd had it done. The laurels were new, the swallows faded a little with time, the tattoos on his arms requiring further attention to see what was new and what was old. 

His hands were cold but he reached out anyway, icy fingertips pressed to Harry's skin, outlining the shape of the butterfly and the flight of the swallow, up and over his shoulder and down over Harry's arm. He stopped at the heart on his sleeve. 

"Your jokes are terrible," he said, voice a little rough. He pressed his thumb to the edge of Harry's tattoo. 

"Only as terrible as the truth is," Harry said, and he shivered, but made no move to press away from Louis's touch. 

Louis made a face. "Haz—"

Harry covered Louis's hand with his own. It was cold. His skin had come out in goose bumps, his nipples hardening. "I love you," he said softly, lacing his fingers with Louis's. He pulled Louis a little closer, and Louis went willingly, his other hand going to rest on Harry's laurel over his hip. 

He didn't say anything back, just tilting his chin up and stepping further into Harry's space, kissing him. He was still het up from crying so hard, a little breathless and stuffed up, his eyes a little sore, his hands trembling. He cupped Harry's face in his hand, stubble rough beneath his fingertips, and kissed him again. 

They'd done this so many times before, learnt all the ways to go from bedroom door to bed and all the bits that went in between. Louis knew the way to fit in against Harry's side, knew how to hook his foot over Harry's under the covers and slide his hand over Harry's thigh to cup his dick. He knew all of that. He wouldn't be learning it new, but that didn't mean it felt the same as it had before. He didn't know this Harry, the one in scruffy tracksuit bottoms and Louis's socks and shivering in the cold of Louis's flat. The one with longer hair who probably needed a shower and a bed with a better mattress to deal with his bad back. The one who'd grown up for two years without Louis by his side, the one who'd grown up before that with Louis next to him but never with him. The way their lives had run parallel for a while, connected only in the moments they touched, but how it had never meant the same as being together. 

It had meant something different entirely, but there wasn't a rule book for that.

"Come to bed," Harry said softly, and pushed down his joggers. 

Louis didn't look down. He couldn't. He kicked off his slippers and stepped on the toe of each of his socks so he could pull them off without making an actual effort to bend down. Then he caught his fingers in his waistband and pushed his trousers down, stepping out of them so that he was naked. 

He was half-hard, and looking across at Harry, he could see he was too. 

"It's freezing," he said, shivering. 

Harry nodded. The covers were still pulled back from where they'd both got out of bed earlier, and Louis slipped under the duvet, shifting over so that Harry could get in after him, pulling the covers up and huddling down so that the only bit of him outside in the frigid air was from his nose upwards. Harry grabbed the blankets and laid them out over the top of them both before huddling into Louis's side, his cold nose pressed against Louis's shoulder. 

"'s'cold," he said, knees bumping into Louis's. He rubbed his cold, elephant feet against Louis's. "Should have left our socks on."

"Sexy," Louis said, but his toes might fall off at this rate so they bloody should have done. He rolled over so that he could pull Harry in and steal what was left of his body heat, leech off him until he felt less like a human ice cube and more like someone about to have sex; even the concept felt alien. 

Harry's dick was pressed up against Louis's thigh, and Louis's breath caught. He rubbed his nose over Harry's shoulder, pulling the duvet over their heads so that they were trapped in the stale almost-warmth of the blanket nest. 

"You said you love me," Harry said softly, his nose brushing Louis's cheek. 

"I loved you before," Louis said. "It doesn't matter."

"It does to me," Harry said, his lips pressed to Louis's jaw. 

Louis shivered. It wouldn't stop Harry from leaving, wouldn't stop him from going back to London and to his life there. The most Louis could hope for from this would be an invitation to go with him – not that he expected that – but Louis had been there and done that. It hadn't ended well and Louis hadn't exactly stocked up on marketable skills since they'd broken up. Here might not be perfect, but Louis had got this job on his own merit and he'd kept it, and he'd made friends with Liam and Niall without any outside influence at all. His cat was perfectly satisfied with his lot, if only because he didn't know that beyond these four walls lay the possibility of presents of fuzzy fish on strings and tiny cat toys and treats for no good reason whatsoever. 

"What do you want to do?" Louis asked, shifting just a little so that Harry's lips brushed his mouth. 

"I want you on top," Harry told him, nipping at Louis's lip with his teeth. He was still only half-hard, Louis too, although he was starting to warm up a little, wanting to run his hands all over Harry, over his thighs and his arse and the quiet strength of his abs. "I don't mind if you ride me or if you fuck me."

Louis hadn't been fucked in a very long time. "I'll ride you," he said finally, his dick starting to perk up. "I've got a condom somewhere. I got twelve for a pound in the pound shop."

Harry blinked. "Twelve for a pound?" 

"You only get top quality condoms round here," Louis said, braving the cold air to open the drawer in the bedside table. "They don't do lube, though, so I've got conditioner."

"Lou—"

"If you feel sorry for me for one fucking second," Louis said, coming back under the covers with a battered, almost full box of condoms and a bottle of Simple conditioner, "then you can literally go fuck yourself."

"I wasn't going to."

"I'm not embarrassed," Louis said, even though he was. He liked lube and he couldn't afford it. Honestly, sometimes wanking was his only joy in life. Conditioner was a cheap yet mostly effective substitute. "If you don't like it, you can wank yourself off and call it done."

"No. Don't want to." Harry slid his hand down into the small of Louis's back, pulling him closer. "Want you," he said, kissing Louis's jaw, his throat, his cheek. 

Louis left the bottle of makeshift lube on the pillow, and let himself be kissed. 

It was easy to get back into the swing of it, to kiss Harry back, to have his dick fatten up in Harry's hand. For Harry to make him laugh with a hand to the small of his back, to have their feet tangle up under the sheets that smelled like cheap value washing powder. Underneath, there was the kind of breathless urgency that came with knowing that Harry was leaving, that tomorrow everything was going to change regardless of whether they wanted it to. That tomorrow, _The Sun_ was going with an article that was going to out Louis as having been with Harry one way or another. Everything was going to change, and it vibrated beneath Louis's skin, a relentless pulse beat, a countdown clock he couldn't turn off. 

Instead, he fingered himself open, kneeling up over Harry, the duvet over his shoulders like a cloak. Cold air seeped in between them, even as Harry reached behind Louis and stroked Louis's fingertips out of the way, nudging his way in as Louis leaned down to kiss him. 

It was curious, the way it felt so desperately new and so awkwardly familiar all at the same time. There were ghosts, too, Harry's threesome he couldn't quite remember, the nameless guy who'd taken the money and run with Harry's privacy and Harry's secrets. The friendships they'd both made that didn't have a space for either of them to talk about what had happened between them, this odd slice of history that fitted in neither of their lives and ended up sitting outside of both of them. It was all there between them as Louis touched himself open and Harry carefully slid on a pound shop condom. 

Louis kissed him. "Do you feel cheap?" he asked, dropping the foil wrapper off the side of the bed and reaching for the conditioner, squeezing some out onto his palm. He meant it as a joke. 

Harry pulled back. "Never with you."

His stupid fucking sincerity made Louis's chest ache. He didn't say, _you made me feel cheap_. Maybe Harry already knew. For something that Louis hadn't ever said, he'd made his silence as loud as possible. 

"Fuck me," he said instead, and Harry's hands tightened around Louis's wrists. There was a moment, suspended between them like time itself was gently plaiting itself into reality, where they just looked at each other. 

"I really do love you, you know," Harry said, and Louis shook his head. 

"It doesn't matter," he said, but it did, and it must have been written all over his face because it was echoed all over Harry's. 

Harry didn't close his eyes as he pressed inside of Louis, Louis's thighs quivering as he sank down on Harry's cock. It was there, that familiar weight, the fullness of his body reacting to Harry being where he hadn't been moments earlier. 

He let out a breath, eyes fluttering closed, and he tipped his head back. His dick twitched, leaking where it was resting against his stomach. 

"Move," Harry breathed, after what seemed like forever. "Move, babe."

Louis groaned, and fucked down onto his cock, Harry's hips pressing up. They moved half at odds with each other, Harry sliding out and having to re-angle and push back in more than once. His thighs protested at the angle, but Harry's hands kept him still, fingers to his hips, and it just—it just meant something. 

The two of them meant something. 

They meant something to Louis, breathless and panting with his orgasm finally starting to build in the pit of his stomach, and they meant something to Harry, his hips rocking up to meet Louis's, his hands all over him, his breath catching. 

They meant something to each other, and they always fucking had, and when Louis's orgasm eventually hit, the weight of it almost took his breath away. 

"I'm sorry," he managed, come streaked across Harry's chest as Harry's hips snapped up one last time, his orgasm pulsing through him as he came too. "I'm so sorry."

Harry just pulled him down into a breathless kiss. "Don't be," he said, kissing Louis again, the angle weird and his dick sliding easily out of Louis's arse as Louis shifted their positions. "Don’t ever be fucking sorry."

Louis flopped back down onto the sheets next to him. They were cold beneath him, the only warm spot in the bed where Harry was laid. He waited while Harry pulled off the condom and tied it off. There wasn't a bin in here, only a half full Tesco carrier bag the other side of the bedside table, but Harry got up and made an effort at tidying up nevertheless. He wiped them both down with a bit of loo roll, put that in the bin too, and got back into bed to pull the covers up over them both again. 

"You don't regret it, do you?" Louis asked softly, a few minutes later. His eyes were covered with the back of his arm. 

"No," Harry said, equally quietly. Outside the bedroom, Humph meowed a little pitifully. "How could I regret that?"

"Dunno," Louis said, slipping his arm back under the covers. He was still warm even though outside of the bed it was freezing, and the tip of his nose was starting to get cold. "Thought you might, that's all."

"No," Harry said again. "Do you want me to let the cat in?"

"In a minute," Louis said, and he rubbed his cold nose over Harry's warm shoulder. "In a minute."

"All right," Harry said, and they stayed just where they were for a little while longer.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I googled "cucumber sausage surprise" today at work, which I hope was a treat for the IT guys. I also put a jaunty knitted hat from a bottle of Innocent on a multi-coloured hedgehog that's found its way into my in-tray, and named the hedgehog "Charls cousin of Charls grandson of Charls renowned Veretian cloth merchant" so I think we can all agree that it's been a day well spent. And last night was Custard for Dinner night, and I am still so full of apple crumble that I might actually _be_ apple crumble. I still google cats when no one's looking.

Louis was awake so early the following morning that it was still dark outside, and Humph was curled up at the end of the bed, a little fluffy spiral of grump who still considered it the middle of the night. 

He wasn't going to be able to sleep again, not knowing that somewhere out there was a newspaper with his name in it. He felt sick just thinking about it. 

He crept out of bed, already layered up from sleeping in tracksuit bottoms and his t-shirt and hoodie and socks, and it was easy to grab his jacket and his trainers without waking Harry up. There was an all-night garage a few minutes walk away, and they should have the papers already, so he pulled his hat down over his ears and stuffed his hands in his pockets and slipped out of the flat. 

~*~

The headline said _**HARRY'S SECRET BOYFRIEND**_ and the picture next to it was another selfie of him and Harry, but this time – for once - it didn't look like they were naked. Louis was making a face at the camera, a fake pout like his sister and his friends always did in every picture, his t-shirt stretched out at the collar, Harry's arm around his shoulder as he held the camera out in front of them. 

Louis, still cold and in his coat and hat and trainers, sank down onto the sofa in his living room and tried to make his hands stop shaking. He was on the front cover of _The_ fucking _Sun._

 _The relationship Harry Styles hid from the world_ , it said underneath the headline. _Shamed pop star Harry Styles hid his boyfriend from his family and friends for a YEAR, The Sun can exclusively report. Harry, who rocked the pop world last week when we revealed details of his sordid threesomes and the secret life he was keeping from everyone (continued on page 4)_

Humph padded into the living room and hopped up into his lap, meowing. He tried to sit right down in the middle of Louis's paper, and Louis ended up holding it up above Humph's head as he settled down. 

"Menace," Louis told him, but he touched his hand to Humph's side, feeling him breathe beneath his fingertips. "Always got to be into what I'm into, haven't you, little lad?"

Humph meowed, shifting a little. He batted his paw against Louis's hand. 

"Best cat," Louis said, but it didn't make him feel any less sick, didn't make the newspaper in his hand disappear. It had to be imaginary; this couldn't be happening. His face wasn't on hundreds of thousands of papers across the country, just waiting to be taken home and flicked past and discussed and laughed at and gossiped about. His life and his relationship and the pictures of him and Harry didn't belong to anyone but them. 

"It's not fair, Humph," he said, trying to open up the paper without hitting his cat in the head. He managed it with marginal success, because there was a picture of him sprawled out on Harry's bed, topless. There was the same picture from before again too, of him and Harry and a baby Humph, and another one of him kissing Harry's cheek as Harry took yet another selfie. He scanned down the article. 

_Secret boyfriend Louis Tomlinson kept Harry's bed warm for a YEAR, we can reveal. Their sordid secret was known only to them, with Harry continuing to pretend he wasn't hiding a sex obsession as he recorded chart-topping singles What Makes You Beautiful and One Thing while thousands of young girls looked up to him as a romantic hero._

He couldn't take it in. Too busy trying to find mentions of himself, he skipped down, over the page, back up again. A picture of Harry on stage captioned _Lying on stage: the songs Harry dedicated to girls and not the boyfriend he even kept from his family._

 _"Louis dropped everything to move to London to be with Harry. I've got no idea where he got the money from. He was broke, couldn't keep a job, and owed us rent," Louis's ex-flatmate, secondary school friend Stan told us. "He told us nothing about who he was visiting every weekend, but it started after he went to see X Factor being recorded. It had to be Harry. Then one day we got home from work and he was gone. We'd been mates for years but he dropped us." A month later, broke Louis's rent was paid in full and so was the remainder of the outstanding lease._

Stan had been his best mate. Fuck. It hadn't felt like him dropping them. The secrets had taken everything in the end. 

_Shamed X-Factor loser Harry was insatiable in bed, one of his multiple ex-lovers told us. "He didn't care about anything other than sex. I don't think he even knew my name."_

Louis refused to think about Harry with anyone else. Harry, coming over someone else's stomach, his dick in someone else's hand. Harry, fucking someone else. Two at once. Jealousy wasn't pretty and it wasn't right but it didn't make it go away. Last night he'd been naked in Harry's arms, and it wasn't supposed to be sad but it had been. Louis hadn't spent two years completely alone and he wasn't ever going to have expected Harry to do the same, but that didn't mean he wanted to think about Harry with someone else. 

He just didn't have any choice when he was faced with the picture of Harry naked and asleep in between those two guys again. 

He dragged his gaze away, scanning down the page. 

_Without his rich, pop star boyfriend by his side, Louis Tomlinson now lives in virtual squalor in a bedsit over a pawnbrokers. Who pays his rent now?_

Louis's chest hurt. He kept staring at it, his pulse beat loud in his ears. He might not be all that clever but he could understand the implication. Everyone would be able to understand the implication. 

"Don't read it," Harry said, coming over and trying to take the newspaper out of Louis's hands. Louis hadn't even heard him come in. He was supposed to still be asleep. "Don't read that shit. It's lies."

"I need to know what they're saying," Louis insisted, trying to keep a hold of the paper. "If people are going to believe this shit, I need to know what it is they're saying. Give it back."

"No," Harry said, stealing it and going to shove it in the bin. "It's rubbish, Louis. It's not you in that. It's some made up version of you that's going to sell papers cos it's got me on the front."

"I bought that," Louis snapped. "That's my money. You can't throw it away." Humph dug his claws into Louis's thighs. "And you can give over, too. You're my cat, you're not supposed to be on his side."

Humph meowed. 

Harry shook his head, standing between Louis and the bin as Louis tried to stand up and detach Humph from where he was clinging to Louis's thighs. "No. No, I'm not letting you do this to yourself. You don't have to see what they're saying."

"Virtual squalor," Louis said. "That's what they're saying. They're saying I live in virtual squalor because you don't pay my rent anymore. I've got to go to work tomorrow. They'll have seen. And it's not a fucking bedsit."

Harry's brow furrowed. He looked half asleep and sleep rumpled. He had pillow marks on his cheek. "That's what you're mad about?"

"No, of course that's not what I'm fucking mad about," Louis said. "I'm mad that it's my fucking sex life on the front page of a fucking tabloid, and that you're supposed to be fucking insatiable. But I don't live in squalor. They don't know anything about me. They've never been in here. And what difference does it make what shop I live by?"

"No one's going to be look at the bit where they talk about where you live, Lou. No one cares."

"I fucking care," Louis said. It was still so early; the sun hadn't even started to rise. The neighbours weren't going to appreciate the two of them having a fight before it was even time to have a cup of tea. Even Humph hadn't demanded his breakfast yet. "I'm not nothing. I work. I work all the time. It's not my fault it's not enough. I'm trying. I'm trying so fucking hard and then they're telling the whole stupid country that I'm living in squalor. It's not fair."

Harry's shoulders dropped. "I know," he said finally. His hair was a mess and half sticking up, and his hoodie was all twisted round. "I know, babe."

Louis let Humph curl up against his chest, and buried his face in his fur. "I know they're ripping you to shreds. I'm sorry."

"At least I'm used to being in the paper," Harry said, leaning back against the kitchen counter. "I suppose at least I'm used to that."

Louis let out a breath. "You shouldn't be getting used to them publishing private shit about you. It's not fair."

Harry shrugged. "They've won," he said, and he sounded tired and worn down. "How can I fight against something like _The Sun_? You think they're going to stop until I've got no career left?"

"Make tea," Louis said. "Stick the kettle on."

"I mean, on the plus side, I'm not crying my eyes out." Harry filled the kettle from the tap and put it back down on it's plastic rest, flicking the switch. He opened the cupboard and got out two mugs, both of them a little chipped and faded and from the same charity shop that Harry's books had come from. There was a fresh box of Yorkshire tea in the cupboard, and not the bashed in box of red label that Louis had found right at the back of the discount shelf in Sainsburys last month. It was taped up with parcel tape and fuck knows how they'd been able to sell something so fucked up for so little discount, but any saving was a saving, so he'd made do. It was at the back of the cupboard now, though, and the box of Yorkshire unwrapped and opened. Harry put a teabag in each of their mugs. 

Louis didn't think about a couple of months ago, when he'd been left having to squeeze out the teabag and use it again just to eke out the end of the box until payday. Sneaking a few teabags out of the drawer in the meeting room where he'd had his annual appraisal at work, just to see him through the end of the month, shoving them in his pocket and hoping no one noticed. 

"It's better I'm not crying, right?" Harry went on, opening the fridge and getting the milk out. "Right?"

"I don’t know." Louis wasn't crying either. He wasn't doing anything. He wasn't entirely sure any of this was happening. Their relationship had only ever happened away from real life. Maybe this was fantasy too. "I don't know how we're supposed to be reacting. I don't know what we're supposed to be doing."

Harry leaned back against the counter as the tea brewed. "I'm sorry they've said shit about where you live. You don't deserve any of that."

"I'm sorry they're talking about you."

"Eh," Harry said. "It's shit, isn't it? It's shit."

"Fucking shit," Louis agreed. He leaned back against the counter too, still in his coat, arms folded. "Christ. What do we do?"

"I've got no idea. Put one foot in front of the other. Stand up, isn't that what you said?"

"No idea how to do that, though."

Harry looked exhausted. "Drink tea, I think."

"Yeah." Louis picked their teabags out of the cups with his fingertips, dumping them down on the side. "Do we pretend it isn't happening?"

"I don't know." Harry let out a breath, and poured milk into their teas. He didn't pick up his mug. His fingertips brushed Louis's sleeve instead. Louis kept still. "I feel like everything's gone imaginary, like this can't be happening. Are we real?"

Louis's fingers twitched. "Think so. Hope so," he said, and when Harry reached for his hand, Louis laced their fingers together and kept holding on. 

~*~

Niall called him mid-morning. "I've seen the paper," he said grimly, when Louis picked up, his cat stretched out in his lap. "Are you all right?"

Harry was pressed against his side, running his fingers down Humph's back. 

"No idea. Don't know what's all right any more."

Niall sighed. "But you're all right, though? No, like, crying fits or anything?"

"Strangely, no," Louis said. "We're just pretending it's not happening."

There was a pause. "Harry's still there?"

"Until the morning." 

"Fuck. I was going to ask if you wanted any company. Thought you might need a mate. Liam's on his way over, but we could come to yours." 

Louis ignored the momentary stab of jealousy at the idea of Niall and Liam having plans that didn't include him. "You can still come over," he said. "It doesn't matter that Harry's here."

Harry twitched. "Who is it?"

Louis moved the phone a fraction. "It's Niall," he said. "He wants to come over and bring Liam."

Harry looked at him for the longest moment. "No," he said softly, and Louis's heart sank. 

"All right. Niall—"

"No, I mean," Harry touched his wrist. He looked a little flushed. "Like, how do they feel about football? Playing it. Like, it wouldn't be proper football or anything, and I'm rubbish, but we could, right? Go to the park. Two on two."

"Harry." 

"Have you got a ball? Or we could buy one."

"Haz," Louis said gently, trying not to think about Niall on the other end of the phone. "We can't go out."

"Why not? Who are we hiding from? Why are we even in here anymore?"

"Niall, love," Louis said, a little distractedly. "Will you call me back in a couple of minutes?"

"Sure," Niall said, but Louis was already hanging up. 

"We can't go out," Louis said. "What are you thinking?"

Harry shrugged. The two of them together, all of Harry's long limbs and giraffe-like awkwardness coupled with Humph all stretched out and Louis's little creaky sofa meant that they were pressed together from shoulder to hip to knee, Harry's breath warm against his cheek. "I've never taken you out," Harry said finally. "It's not, like, I don't know. It's just – you told me not to let them win. You told me to stand up. I don't…" he stopped. "They've tried to take everything and I don't want them to. I want to go to the park and kick a ball about."

"It's freezing outside."

"We'll wear hats. And scarves."

"I've seen pictures of you doing sport. You're like a zebra on rollerskates."

"Zebras are a hundred times more coordinated than me. I'm like a pony. I prance."

"Haz—"

Harry looked away. "I'm so proud of you, you know? I don't know how to tell you. It's such a stupid thing to want to say. I think you're brave and strong and I love you. I keep, I don't know, not doing right by you. I just want it to be real for, like, once, all right? I want to know it's real."

It was real. There was a newspaper out there with his face in it, again, and come tomorrow, Harry would be gone. He'd be gone back to his life in London, back to being someone so far outside of Louis's grasp he'd been stupid to ever try and hold on in the first place. "You've never taken me out," Louis said softly. 

"I know. I should have done."

There was something so very sad inside of Louis's chest, a pain that wasn't going to go away. "I would have done anything for you, you know," he said finally. "Back then."

"I didn't deserve you."

"I know. But I wish I'd been able to play it cool you know? Not been so clingy and obsessive. Not driven you away."

Harry shook his head. "Don’t. I shouldn't ever have said that."

"You felt it, though. Don't pretend you didn't."

"It wasn't…" Harry trailed off. "I was a mess. I messed up." He stroked his thumb over Louis's knuckles, before bringing his hand up to his mouth to kiss. "Let's go to the park. Let's just say, I don't know, fuck _The Sun_. I'm hiding and I thought it was easier but it's not. I just feel more trapped. I've felt trapped for so long."

Louis's phone started to ring. It said _Nialler_ on the screen, underneath the crack. Humph was decidedly unimpressed with being woken up again, and he stretched his paws out lazily before digging his claws into Louis's leg for the hundredth time. 

"Well?" Harry said softly. "What do you say?"

Louis had spent so long trying to keep it all inside, everything he'd ever felt about Harry fucking Styles and all the rest of it, all the fall out and the secrets and the legal documents and the desperate fucking hurt. 

It turned out he loved him anyway, and destruction was fucking inevitable. 

"Well?" Harry said again. "Aren't you going to answer it?"

Louis's heart pounded. He pressed the green button. "Niall," he said, trying to remove Humph and his claws from his thigh. Humph meowed grumpily at him, and butted his head against Louis's chest. "How do you and Liam feel about a bit of footie in the park?"

"Awesome," Niall said, after a pause. "Your ball or mine?"

Louis touched his hand to Harry's leg, heart thumping at the way Harry's thigh trembled beneath his touch. "Yours," he said finally, stroking his thumb up the inside of Harry's thigh until his knuckles met Harry's crotch. 

Harry covered Louis's hand with his own, a hissed intake of breath as Louis pressed his palm to Harry's dick through his tracksuit bottoms. Harry held his hand there.

"Come over in an hour?" Louis said, watching as Harry bit his lip, eyes fixed fiercely on Louis. 

"All right," Niall said. "And just so you know, Lou, we've got your back. Me and Liam."

Louis wanted to cry at that. "Thanks," he said softly, because he hadn't had a team in a very long time. He never had been very good at being by himself. "I'll see you in a bit."

"Lou," Harry said wretchedly, as Louis hung up. "My Louis."

Louis wasn't ever Harry's, and Harry wasn't ever Louis's, but it didn't stop them reaching for each other anyway. It didn't stop Louis from trying to hold on just that little bit longer, just that little bit more, just that little bit too much. 

Harry would be gone in the morning, and Louis couldn't bear it.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL. On Saturday I made a terrible life choice and decided to clean out my storage cupboard/box room (which took me ALL DAY, hence it being a REALLY TERRIBLE LIFE CHOICE) and in one of the bags I found the [penicorn](http://bbsimg.ngfiles.com/1/16696000/ngbbs48622f0a8b23e.jpg) (not my picture, but my penicorn looks much the same) and it turns out I still don't know what to do with the penicorn other than text pictures of it to unsuspecting people, because I'm that kind of good friend. I have found [a Humph instagram](https://www.instagram.com/cat.nemo/), though. You're welcome.

An hour later, and Louis was going slowly mad. He couldn't stay still, his phone kept buzzing, and Humph kept trying to trip him up every time he turned around. 

Harry looked a little bit like he was going to be sick. 

"We don't have to," Louis said, when he'd made them yet another cup of tea, bringing it over and nudging Harry in the ankle with his toes. "We can just stay here. Niall and Liam won't mind."

"I'll mind," Harry said, taking the tea. "I mean. Unless you don't want to?"

"I'm up for it." Louis perched on the arm of the sofa, and took a gulp of his tea. It was too hot and burnt his mouth. An hour ago he'd gone down on his knees for Harry, right there in the living room with Humph in the corner – coincidentally giving his own bits a good lick, which did nothing if not suggest that what Louis had been doing was a really bad idea – but Harry hadn't stopped him. He'd slid his hands into Louis's hair as Louis had pulled Harry's tracksuit bottoms down over his dick, and when Louis had taken him into his mouth, he'd let out a long, desperate groan and tugged Louis closer. 

Harry had wanked Louis off afterwards, and then taken first shower whilst Louis had heavy breathed his stress into Humph's fur. 

Louis didn't want him to go, that was the thing, and that was the one inevitability about all of this: Harry had to leave. He had a life that wasn't here. He had a job, and commitments, and a family to make it up with. None of them were here. Nothing that Louis had was worth Harry giving up any of the rest of it. Anyway, everything the two of them had ever had was based on one of them giving up to much. It was just that so far, it had been Louis doing most of the giving up. 

"How's the tea?"

"Spot on," Harry said. He kept curling his toes into the carpet. "Lou—"

"Yeah?"

"I should have taken you out years ago. I'm sorry I didn't. I don't know if I said that earlier."

Louis shrugged, fingernails scratching at his thigh. "It's all right. You weren't ready."

"I was ready to have sex with you."

Louis made a face. "It's not the same thing, though, is it? Look, all right. I don't care that you weren't ready. It's not the—" he stopped. "You left me. You didn't do right by me. That's what my mum would have said. It wasn't about you not being ready."

"You're never going to forgive me, are you?" Harry cupped his tea, resting his cheek against the mug. "I keep hoping that you will, or that you might, but I hurt you too much."

It stung. It more than stung; it hurt. All week long his chest had felt tight, like it was caving in on itself, like just the proximity to Harry was making him short of breath. "I don't know," he said finally. "Last week I would have said never."

"How about this week?"

"You're taking me out," Louis said, and he didn’t know what else to say. "Harry—" he stopped. He stared into his tea. 

"It's okay. I don't think I would have forgiven you if it was the other way around."

"I don't want you to go," Louis said softly. "I don't know if I've forgiven you, but I don't want you to go."

"God, Louis."

"I know you can't stay. I'm not asking you to. I just. Maybe it isn't about, like, I don't know. Maybe it's not about just, like, forgiveness."

Harry watched him for the longest moment. "Let me take you out," he said finally. "Let's just have something normal, just this once."

Louis nodded. "All right," he said, and when the doorbell rang a few minutes later, he went down to let Liam and Niall in, Niall with his football in a carrier bag. 

"You still want to go out?" Liam asked, Humph curled up against his chest like a sneaky little fluffball. It was a little awkward, Liam and Niall and Harry and Louis and Humph, all pressed together in Louis's apparently squalid living room, _The Sun_ a silent chokehold over all of them. "We don't have to."

"We do," Harry said. His knee bumped up against Louis's. 

Niall kept glancing over at the newspaper sticking out of the bin. "Are you all right? You know, with everything."

"We're fine," Louis lied. "Let's just play football. Need to get some fresh air."

"All right," Niall said, like it wasn't entirely clear that everyone in the room was lying. "Let's go, then."

Even leaving the house felt momentous; putting on shoes and making sure that Humph was still in the living room with the door shut, going back to check twice in case he'd sneaked out with them. Pulling the door closed behind them, Liam and Niall waiting on the stairs, Harry hovering by the bannister fiddling with the zip of his hoodie. He was layered up in a jumper and a hoodie, his coat too smart to wear to the park. Louis should have asked Niall to bring a spare pair of gloves with him; Louis only had the one pair and Harry was going to get cold hands. At least he had two hats, even if one of them was a bit battered and old and well worn. Harry could pull it down over his ears and keep his head warm. 

They just hadn't gone out together, the two of them. It just hadn't happened. They'd literally never hung out together with friends. 

Louis hadn't even properly introduced everyone. It was too late to do that now. They were always missing opportunities, all this time, even now. 

Liam held the door open for everyone as they went down the steps and out onto the street – as Louis went by he patted him on the shoulder. "It'll be okay," he said, like he could personally protect Louis from being named and shamed by _The Sun_ all over again. 

If anyone could, it would be Liam. He'd be Louis's best guard dog, if only Louis would let him in. Maybe it was time. 

"I know," he said, as he joined Harry, waiting by the front gate. "Do you think Humph will be okay? He didn't get out, did he?"

"He didn't," Harry said, pointing upwards. Humph was sitting on the windowsill in Louis's living room, watching them go. "He's there, look."

"Good," Louis said, refusing to think back to what it felt like when he'd discovered Humph was gone. "Right, lads. Game faces on. Are we playing footy, or what?"

Harry shoved his hands in his pockets. "We are," he said, "we really are."

~*~

They passed the library on the way to the park. There were posters in the window for free Tuesday night classes. This week's was _Having trouble managing your money? Learn how to BUDGET. 7.30pm Tuesday. Free advice and guidance._

Louis swallowed, and made a big deal about facing the other way. He hadn't looked at any of his bills since discovering Harry had paid some of them off; he had no idea what was due or what he owed or what was in his bank account. Debt was something he carried around with him, always there, and before now, never even vaguely fixable. There was never enough money and there were always too many bills and things to pay off and he was always just that little bit more hungry than he'd like. When he considered other people and how they managed their lives, most of the time he was torn between wishing he wasn't as stupid as he was and wishing he was luckier. Neither way helped him fix his mountain of debt, but then nothing except a fairy fucking godmother was ever going to make what he earned be enough for him to live on and make some kind of inroad into what he owed. Until Harry, but Harry came with his own rules and Louis never had been able to make sense of those. 

"You still with us?" Niall asked, elbowing him. It was fairly quiet out, still early enough that the big Sainsbury's hadn't opened yet and a lot of the smaller shops were still closed too. The library didn't open until one, and other than a guy with a dog and a copy of _The Sunday Times_ under his arm, they hadn't exactly stumbled across the hoards of Harry's fans that Louis had secretly worried might be lurking outside the flat. 

"Think so," Louis said. They were waiting for the green man at the crossing the other side of the library, Liam and Harry making small talk the other side of the man with the dog. "Did your cousin tell you I'm seeing him in the morning?"

Niall glanced at him. "No. He told me he was ringing you." 

"I'm seeing him at 7.30. Got to remember to, you know, get up."

"What about Harry?"

Louis was working quite hard not to show any of it on his face. "He'll be gone by then. He's going at four in the morning."

"Early."

"He's got meetings," Louis said, doing his best to show no emotion. It didn't work, judging by the way Niall was looking at him. 

"Are you going to be okay?"

"Course," Louis said. "I always have been before."

The man turned green so they could cross the road. 

"Call us if you need to," Niall told him in an undertone, and Louis nodded.

"All right," he said but he'd done this by himself before; he could do it again. 

~*~

The ground was frosty hard, Louis's knees were still sore from falling when he'd found Humph, and football was a fucking stupid idea, but Louis wanted to turn his chin up to the sky and just breathe. He was outside. He was outside, and so was Harry, and the world wasn't fucking ending. 

"Hey," Harry said, coming up behind him, hand to Louis's hip. "There's sky up there, apparently. Not a ceiling."

"Outside," Louis said. "Who'd have thunk it?"

Harry dropped a kiss to Louis's shoulder. "Sorry it took me so long."

"Got there in the end," Louis said, and his heart was pounding. "Two on two?"

"Niall and me versus the two of you?" Liam asked, dropping the ball and kicking it between his feet. 

"Stop being a show off," Louis said, jogging forward and taking the ball off Liam. "You forgot you're playing the king of the football pitch."

"Oi," Liam said, trying to grab Louis round the waist. Louis darted away, ball at his feet. 

"The ball's mine," Louis said, and he ran the full length of their stupid pitch and kicked the ball between their makeshift goal posts, Niall at his heels. 

They played for half an hour, running up and down the length of the pitch, Harry only tripping over his feet a couple of time. For Louis, trapped inside for much of the week, and trapped in his own head for way too long before that, his insides rang with it, adrenaline pumping as he tackled Liam and fought Niall for the ball and helped Harry to score a goal. Sunday football in the park was supposed to be a bit lazy, but Louis pushed himself, trying to get his heart pumping. 

In the end, breathless and laughing, Liam scored another goal and tugged Niall into a hug. 

"You still didn't win," Louis said, hands on his hips, "because we scored seven thousand goals and you scored three."

Niall just laughed. "Liars. We're the winners."

"Nah," Harry wrapped an arm around Louis's shoulders. Accepting Harry's touch was familiar in a way it shouldn't be after so long apart, and Louis dropped his head to Harry's shoulder. He only had today. Surely he could take what he wanted if it was just for today. 

Harry's hand tightened on his shoulder, and he kissed the top of Louis's head. 

Louis shivered, unable to help himself, and Liam, watching him with a careful look on his face, smiled. 

"I don't know what you think about this," Liam said a little carefully, "but it's fucking freezing out. We could go and get a pint. But only if you want to."

They'd purposefully chosen the corner of the park furthest from the main entrance, right at the bit furthest from the main paths, but it wasn't like they were totally by themselves. Louis was fairly sure they'd been noticed, a small group of girls hanging out by one of the memorial benches a little way away. Or maybe he was thinking too much of himself; no one would expect Harry to be here. Even if people did know which town Louis lived in, they didn't know that Harry was here with him, and they probably wouldn't expect the two of them to be playing football in the park with mates on a Sunday when they were the cover story in _The Sun_. People only ever saw what they wanted to see. Maybe no one would expect to see Harry in a pub ordering a pint on a Sunday lunchtime, so maybe they could get away with it. 

Louis glanced up at Harry, who still had his arm around Louis's shoulders. "What do you think?"

"Fuck it," Harry said, slightly less carefully. "What are they going to write about me now? _Shamed X Factor loser with sordid sex secrets is a secret alcoholic_?"

"If we're going with what they've written before, like, I wouldn't entirely rule that out." Niall at least sounded apologetic about it. 

"I don't think there's anything I could do that they couldn't spin into something terrible," Harry said. He was flushed pink from all the running around, a little sweaty, a little out of breath. "Anyway. Someone I think is kind of all right told me to stand up and stop hiding."

Louis tensed. "Haz—"

"Let's go have a drink. Please, guys. We'll go and have a drink, get warm, and pretend everything in my life isn't going down the toilet."

"This isn't fair," Liam said. "It's not fair."

"No," Louis agreed. He pulled away from Harry, running his hands through his hair, trying to get it out of his eyes. He needed one of those stupid sweat bands. Or a hair cut. Probably the hair cut. "You sure you want this?"

Harry looked at him for what felt like the longest time. Then, very carefully, he held his hand out. "I want this," he said softly, time stretching out between them, slow and true. He kept his hand out. "I want this, Louis."

Louis stared down at his hand, then over at Niall and Liam, watching them, then over at the girls who may or may not be watching Harry. At least one of them had their phone out and pointed in their general direction.

His heart beat loud and fast. 

"Lou," Harry said, and he sounded a little desperate. He kept his hand outstretched. 

"God," Louis said, which wasn't an answer. It wasn't anything. He stared down at Harry's hand, and time kept on ticking on, just like it always had, just like it always would, even when Harry was gone. Even when he was alone again, and trying to do everything by himself like Harry hadn't even been here. 

He stayed just where he was, and tried to remember how to breathe.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I googled "pigeons" earlier. They weren't cute. Not like kittens.

"Louis," Harry said, hand still outstretched. 

"You're leaving," Louis said, because Harry was. He was leaving, and he was leaving in less than twenty-four hours, and it was already going to hurt. All of the adrenaline from running up and down their makeshift football pitch was shifting from endorphins to something else. Fear. Humiliation. The girls over by the path were pointing their phones towards them. His life was being played out through someone else's lens, and he hadn't signed up for any of it. He was just a playing piece in someone else's board game, and he always had been shit at board games. "You're leaving."

"I know," Harry said. "But I could come back."

"You could," Louis said softly, gaze flicking to the girls and back to Harry. Harry, who looked like he might be pleading with him. Whose hand was still outstretched. Louis wanted so much to be able to take it. To forget about what had happened and to believe that pushing for the two of them to be together would eventually result in him being happier more than he would end up hurt. Everything between the two of them had always eventually ended up in the hurt column, though. "But you won't. I know you. You won't come back for me."

It was another few seconds before Harry dropped his hand. Louis couldn’t look at Niall or Liam. He couldn't take the pity he was sure he'd see on their faces. Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets to stop them from shaking. 

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry. But, like, those girls over there are taking pictures. I don't want to be that person who was back in your life for a day. It's bad enough everyone knows about us, without me being the guy you dumped again."

Harry's shoulders dropped. "It's not like that. It wouldn't be like that. You're writing us off without even trying."

"Isn't it just like that, though? Look—" he took a breath, glancing over at Niall and Liam, then back at Harry. Niall and Liam looked as uncomfortable and pitying as he'd imagined. The cold was starting to whistle through his clothes now he was standing still, his hoodies not enough to keep him warm in the middle of winter. "And it's not about not trying. It's not about you and me like that. You know how I feel about you. You know it. But, like, what's it going to take for us to realise we're just not meant to be? We never were. It just keeps going so wrong. What's the point of even trying again? I'm the one who ends up hurt. I'm always the one that ends up hurt."

Harry's face didn't crumple. It came close, but it didn't crumple. His eyes were bright. "I get hurt too. It's not just you."

Watching Harry's hope gently drain out of him felt a little bit like Louis's rib cage was slowly being ripped open. It hurt to breathe. "Harry."

"And I don't know how you feel about me," Harry went on obstinately, face flushed. "It's not like you tell me. You kiss me and you'll touch me and you'll put me up for a week and let me share your bed, but I don't know what you want from me. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm _trying_."

"I know." 

"I just keep getting it wrong." He sounded perilously close to crying. Louis couldn't bear to see him cry. 

"We shouldn't be talking about this here." They were in public. Liam and Niall were clearly torn between staying here as protection and leaving the two of them to it. Either way they looked fucking sorry for him, and Louis hated it when people were sorry for him. This was why he never told anyone anything. The humiliation of explaining it when it had all gone wrong was the worst. 

"The rest of it's happening in public. My phone wasn't public but stuff off it still ended up in all the fucking papers. Those pictures were mine. They were the only bit I had left of you and they were _mine_. They took them and they were mine." This time Harry really did cry, a sob catching in his throat. "You were mine and I lost you, and I don't know how to get you back."

"Christ," Louis said, because he didn’t know either. The only thing he did know was that both of them kept getting hurt. "Don't cry."

Liam made a gesture that looked a little bit like _hug him_. Louis tried making a face back at him, but it was hard when Harry looked a lot like he was going to give up and weep right in front of him, right in the eye line of those teenage girls with their smartphones. Niall shrugged his shoulders a little helplessly. 

"I'm not crying," Harry said, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. "I'm fine. I just—I love you, all right. I love you and I'm tired of missing you, and I hate that we're both sad all the time, and I hate that I can't help you and when I do I get it wrong. I'm sorry about the money." Louis swallowed, refusing to glance over Harry's shoulder towards his friends. "I just wanted to help you. I only ever want to be there for you."

"I can't pay you back," Louis said, as quietly as he could. "It was one debt and now it's another, except now it's to you." He was so fucking cold. The wind had turned biting. "I don't want to owe you anything."

"You don't," Harry insisted, voice thick. "You don't owe me anything."

Louis owed him thousands. He owed him so much that there was no hope in hell of ever paying him back. He didn't look at his friends. "I do."

Harry shook his head. A tear ran down his cheek, hastily wiped away. 

"Please don't cry. Please."

"I'm not," Harry said again, but he was, and it hurt, and Louis was so terribly cold. Maybe it didn't matter if the girls with their cameras out got a picture of them hugging. 

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Harry's neck, tugging him into a hug. Harry's nose was cold and a little sniffly against his skin, and it should have been revolting, and it sort of was, but everything was so desperate and so rubbish and so cold that it was all Louis could do not to crawl inside of him and stay forever. He squeezed his eyes shut instead, and held on, Harry's shoulders shaking. 

"I'm not letting this go," Harry said, mouth pressed to Louis's neck. "I'm going to prove it to you. I'm going to prove that we're worth it."

"I don't know if we are," Louis said, because maybe it would hurt less if thoughts like that weren't trapped inside of his head. 

Harry pressed closer. "You are to me," he said finally, softly, and it was a long moment before Louis nodded. 

He pulled away. "Let's go to the pub."

"You sure?" Liam asked, brow furrowed. 

"Yeah," Harry said, wiping his eyes. "Let's go and have a drink." 

~*~

Liam and Niall didn't come back with them after they all had a fairly mediocre carvery and a pint at the pub at the other side of the park. Louis and Harry had sat next to each other, Liam and Niall keeping up most of the conversation whilst Louis had nodded in most of the right places, and Harry had chimed in with the odd bit every now and again. By the end of the meal, Harry's foot had been pressed firmly against Louis's, and Louis hadn't been moving away. 

Louis knew it was stupid. He knew he was going to get hurt. He knew Harry was going to get hurt. He knew they weren't going to end up happy and together. 

It didn't mean he didn't want to touch him or be with him or love him for the rest of today, even if he hadn't wanted to do that in front of a group of girls with a collection of smartphones and the ability to use them. He'd seen what had happened when it had been their own pictures, and their own information used against them. He wasn't exactly keen on handing that power over to anyone else. 

They hadn't stayed for a dessert, Niall and Liam peeling off one way to go back to Niall's, and Louis and Harry walking back towards Louis's together. They'd hugged, even Niall and Liam and Harry, Niall clapping Harry on the back and Liam telling him he hoped it would all work out all right. 

Both of them had bundled Louis up in a hug and told him to call if they needed him, and that they'd see him later in the week. 

Louis didn't want to lose them like he'd lost the other people he'd cared for. This was his future, this life, and once this thing with Harry was over, he had to fucking live it. 

"Are you scared about going back tomorrow?" Louis asked, once they were walking back from the pub towards Louis's, and they were half a road away from home. It was taking all of his effort not to look around, not to watch people watching them, not to stare at every person in the vicinity just in case they were going to steal something else from them and put them back in the papers. 

Harry had his hands shoved in his pockets. He looked cold. "I'm terrified."

"Maybe it won't be that bad."

"Maybe." Harry kicked an empty Coke bottle out of his way. "I didn't mean to upset you. Earlier."

"I know." He relented. "It's not that I don't want you. You know I do. It's just, like, our lives don't fit together. There's so much history. It's been two years and we've been stuck in my flat all week. It's not real life. Me and you are a huge fucking risk for something we've never tried outside of my flat or your house. And now we're half a country away from each other and you've got a tour coming up. I'm not just saying no because I'm trying to be mean."

"I might not have a tour. They've been selling their tickets back."

"I didn't think you could sell tickets back. I thought it was all re-sales."

"Maybe no one's buying them." Harry shrugged, slowing down as they got to Louis's front gate, and then following him up the path to the front door. "Maybe I really have fucked my career by keeping secrets."

"Liking boys isn't a crime."

"I know." 

Louis unlocked the door and they went up the stairs, Louis scooping up his post as they went past his pile on the stair. "I don't know if you do," he said finally, trying to balance his post and his keys as he tried to jam the key into the Yale. "I don't know if you do know that none of this is actually your fault."

"Messing you around was my fault."

"The papers. Being outed. Sleeping with someone who stole your photos. That's not your fault. You're the victim." He checked for Humph behind the door, even though he'd put him in the living room in case Niall or Liam accidentally let him out when they were leaving earlier. He waited until Harry was inside before locking the door after them and dumping his keys on the side, pushing the door to the living room open and crouching down for Humph to run over and bump his little furry cat face into Louis's hand. He bundled Humph up into a hug. "Did you miss me, little lad? My favourite grumpy kitten. Hi, Humph, hi." When he stood back up, Humph in his arms and meowing in a plaintive, _you left me_ kind of a way, Harry was leaning against the door frame, a strange, sad look on his face. "What?"

"I love you so much," Harry said. His eyes were wet. "I'm sorry I've made everything worse for you. I'm sorry I've fucked your life up."

Louis swallowed. "You haven't," he said, even though being outed in _The Sun_ kind of had. He didn't know what to do. He really, really had no idea what to do to make any of this better. "Do you want to hold Humph?"

"He's your cat," Harry said softly. "He's yours."

"I lend him out on special occasions. Not to take, obviously. You can't take him. He's mine. But you can hold him." He was already stepping closer, pressing a protesting Humph into Harry's arms. Harry buried his face in Humph's fur. 

"Hello, little lad," Harry said softly. "I'm going to miss you."

Louis let out a breath. "I wish I knew what to do for the best. Everything's mixed up in my head."

"I know," Harry said, rocking Humph a little, like he was a baby cat. Or just a baby. He was so gentle with him. Humph needed more people to love him. Maybe Louis wasn’t enough. 

"It's not your fault. The paper, and the pictures, and going to bed with someone—two someones—who turned out to be gigantic dickheads. It's really not your fault."

"I should have been more careful. I should have—not. I shouldn't have gone to bed with them at all."

Louis shook his head. "You can go to bed with whoever the fuck you want. Anyone you want. Being gay isn't illegal. It's them that's in the wrong."

"I messed everything up," Harry said, breath catching. "I hurt you. I hurt my mum and Gemma. I hurt my family. I hurt my friends. I hurt you the most."

"Maybe you should have told them you were gay," Louis said. "But taking a while to come out isn't a crime either. It's messy but it's not a crime. What _The Sun_ did was awful. It might be revenge porn. Niall's cousin Willie said something about how there might be a case. Intimate pictures published without our consent or something. That makes you the victim."

"It makes you the victim, you mean. I was an idiot."

Louis let out a breath. He was stood right by Harry's shoulder, Humph touching his cold little nose to Harry's chin. He'd done that when he was a brand new kitten too, Louis's best gift ever, the present that kept on giving even when everything else had gone to shit. "If I could have you stay, I would. I know you think I'm messing you around, that I should give you a chance. But you've got a career and a flat and a job and a life that hundreds of miles from here. I don't fit in."

"You could."

"Not without both of us giving too much up. And we haven't ever done this. We've only ever been behind closed doors."

"I'll show you we can make a go of it," Harry said. "I'll prove it to you."

Louis didn’t have anything to say to that. He rested his chin on Harry's shoulder instead, waiting for Humph to bump his little face against Louis's. "I love you," Louis said softly, without taking his eyes off his cat. "I love you so much."

Harry trembled. "Lou—"

"You'll be the best pop star who just happens to like guys ever. You'll go in there tomorrow and you'll have a new PR team and they'll be supportive and great and you'll get it all back on track. A couple of weeks time and you won't even remember me."

"Not true."

"You'll be back at number one before you know it." Louis continued, trying not to let his desperation show on his face. He was losing him all over again, and it was for the best, but that didn't make it better. 

"I don't want to do it without you."

"You've done it all without me so far."

Harry leaned down to kiss the top of Humph's head. "Will you fuck me?" he asked softly, bumping his elbow into Louis's. "Just—" the _one last time_ rang loud in Louis's head, "I just want to feel like I'm yours."

Louis didn't say, _we'll both end up getting hurt_ or _we're going round and round in circles_ or _this isn't a good idea_. He'd turned Harry down once today already. He didn't think he could do it again. 

"All right," he said, and Harry let out a ragged breath. 

"I just want to feel like I'm yours," he said again. 

"You are," Louis said, against his better judgment, and Humph meowed.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Chest infections and being sick and stuff is fairly miserable, all things considered. Couple more chapters to go. 
> 
> [Here is a kitten dressed as a mushroom](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/07/11/article-2360017-1AC23A29000005DC-957_634x632.jpg). You've missed me, I know.

"How do you want it?" Louis asked, once they were both naked and chilly under the duvet, Humph once again banished to the living room. Harry's cold hands were in the small of Louis's back, stroking down over his arse, and Louis wanted to bury himself in Harry's arms and stay there forever. 

Louis had given everything up for Harry before, though, barrelling halfway across the country with no job or friends or place to live at the end of it, nothing but Harry waiting for him like that was supposed to be enough. It had been, for a while, but it hadn't been in the long run. When Harry had gone there had been nothing left, just a giant hole where his life had been, and Louis had been trying to make the best of that ever since. It was still beating him. 

"Like this," Harry said, pressing himself closer, his dick rubbing against Louis's hip. He kissed Louis's jaw. "So I can see you."

Louis shifted a little so he could kiss the corner of Harry's mouth. "You hate it this way."

Harry just shook his head. "No," he said, and Louis didn't know whether that meant his tastes had changed, or just that Louis hadn't remembered it right. "I want it like this." 

Louis nodded, rolling away to grab a condom and the conditioner he used for lube. Harry tugged him back, fingertips gripping his shoulder. 

"Haz—"

"I'm going to prove it to you," Harry said, not letting go. One of his fingernails had caught at Louis's skin. "I'm going to prove it. Prove that I can be someone you might want to be with. Properly. I'm not going to let you down again. I promise."

Fuck. Louis wanted to believe that. He wanted it so much. He just couldn't give up everything for this big a risk. He didn't have it in him to pick himself up if it went wrong again. He couldn't. He was only just managing to get through the days. "All right," he said softly, finally. "All right."

Harry reached for him, kissing him, and Louis rocked his hips up into Harry's, their dicks not quite lining up, everything just that little bit off centre and backwards. They kept on kissing, urgent, each of them clearly trying to say something to each other, Louis trying to put _please don't let me down_ into every touch and every hopeless breath. 

Torn between self preservation and just this once getting what he wanted, he had no idea what to do. Louis's only protector for so long had been himself; himself and –at a push—Humph. He'd even forced his mum away, his mum, who'd sworn to him she'd protect him forever, but too ashamed and too caught up in legal threats of disclosure, he'd pushed her away. 

"I'll prove it to you," Harry said again, as Louis fingered him open, slick fingertips opening him up as Harry clung to him. "I swear."

Louis just nodded, kissing him again, shifting down and sucking a mark into the pale join between throat and shoulder. A reminder that he was there. Harry was going to leave him, go back to real life, and promising Louis now that it was going to change didn't mean that it would. Maybe it would and maybe it wouldn't, but at least if Harry went, he was going to go with Louis's mark on him. 

Harry hissed in a breath, hand in Louis's hair, holding him right where he was. 

When Louis rolled on the condom, lubing himself up so he could line himself up, it felt like he couldn't breathe. Harry was laid out beneath him, sweaty under the covers where it was too hot, holding on to Louis's wrists like if he let go for one second Louis would be gone. 

"I can't lose myself again," Louis told him, trying not to give in to it and just say he'd go with Harry back to London. He stayed where he was, kneeling in between Harry's legs. 

"You won't," Harry said, but Louis would. If he went with him now, if he trusted that Harry was going to change and that there'd be a space for him in his life, if he gave up his job and his flat and his friends and his life up here without anything to go to in London, his whole world would be Harry again, and it couldn't be. 

Louis kissed him again, kissed him until they were both breathless and Harry's legs were wrapped around his waist, until Harry was begging for it and Louis couldn't wait any longer. Then he pressed inside of him, Harry's hissed intake of breath their accompaniment, and Louis didn't move until Harry said _fuck me, please, fuck me_. 

It felt like the last time. It hurt, knowing that it might be. That regardless of what was going to come later, Harry was still leaving in the morning, and he might not be coming back. 

"Harder," Harry begged, fingers leaving marks on Louis's arms. Maybe they both wanted something to hold onto, something to remember today by, something to take with them once Harry had gone and everything had gone back to the way it was before. 

Louis fucked down into him, Harry's hips rolling up, and it had been ages since Louis had done this. Ages since he'd had someone in his bed full stop. He'd pulled a few times, even had the very occasional cheeky shag, but he hadn't brought anyone home in a long time. He hadn't done a lot of stuff in a long time. His life had been on hold and it wasn't like he could remember even pressing pause. 

Harry came first in the end, pulsing between them with one hand on his dick, panting into Louis's mouth. He clenched around Louis's dick as he came, tipping Louis towards the edge too. The descent he didn't sign up for. The crest of a fucking wave. 

Louis loved him, but that didn't mean he could have him. 

~*~

Afterwards, Louis rested his head against Harry's chest, the duvet pulled up over both of them, two cups of tea on the bedside table and Humph padding into the bedroom to join them on the bed. 

Humph being Humph, he came and sat on Harry's stomach, two inches from Louis's face, and started to lick his paws. 

"Silly old bear," Harry said a little gruffly, allowing one hand to come out of the blanket pit to give Humph a pat. 

"He likes to be where the action is," Louis said, stroking his hand over Harry's bare hip. "You all right?"

"As all right as I can be." Harry dropped a kiss to Louis's head. Neither of them said anything for a bit. "If everything was perfect, would you still not want to be with me?" He sounded careful. 

Louis kept touching him. He couldn't meet Harry's eyes. "If everything was perfect, of course I would. But it's not."

"God, Louis. What can I do?"

"I don't know." Louis was so scared. He was holding on to his life by the tiniest of threads, and everything felt like it was slipping. 

"You were the one telling me to stand up," Harry said. "You've told me all week to stand up. I want to tell you the same, but I'm scared you'll run."

Louis shuffled further under the covers, Harry's arm going around his shoulders. "It's not about that," Louis said finally. "It's not about standing up. It's about…" he stopped. He didn't know how to put it into words. He never had. "I'm more than just you. I need something that's mine. I'm not, like—if we don't work out I'll have nothing and it was hard enough last time."

"So you won't even give us a chance?"

"It's not about that." Louis didn't know how to explain it. He rolled away, staring up at the damp patch on the ceiling, hand to Harry's thigh. "I need to be able to pay my own way. Even if it's not much of a way. I've got this little lad to provide for." He stopped stroking Harry's hip in favour of petting his cat. "I do something like come to London and I've got no money coming in and I've got the lease from this place and no job and how do I pay for cat food? I know you're not asking me to come with you or anything, it's like, just an example. I got myself in such a mess last time. I'm no good at this. I don't know if I missed the lessons on being an adult or what, but I've got no fucking clue what I'm doing. You just paid off the mess I got myself in the last time it went tits up between us. I don't even know if you paid off both my credit cards or just one. I can't—" he wanted to cry. "I can't do it again. I can't get myself here again. It's not about not wanting you. It's not about me not trusting you when you say you want to do better. It's about me. I felt worthless when you left me. I didn't have a life that wasn't about you. I don't have much more of one now but I've got a bit of a one and it's kind of like, I don't know, like I don't want to lose that. Or risk it, you know? 

"They said I lived in squalor and I don't, right? Like, I don't have any money and I've been ignoring that letter saying I've got to have an electricity meter fitted, but I don’t want to live my life being chased by all this fucking debt. There's this job going at work, right? Margaret—did I tell you about her? She's my boss, and she's, like, always going on at me about being five seconds late back from lunch—but she said that I should at least apply. I'd be a customer service assistant instead of just an admin one, and it's basically what I do now but for, like, 20p more an hour or something, so basically nothing, and I wasn't going to, because I was just thinking, what's the point, you know? I won't get it, and it'll be embarrassing, like, failing. But maybe there is a point. Maybe this is me standing up. There's this life, like, and it's mine, right? And I haven't been living it because what is there to live when every two months I have to go to the food bank and in between I just sit on my sofa and talk to my cat and try and get him to play football with me. But, like—" he tailed off. "Haz. It's mine. It's my shit life and I don't want to give it up or throw it away. There's more to me than just you."

Harry's eyes were wet. "Fuck," he said, voice catching. "Fuck, Louis. There's just no space for me, is there?"

"That's not—" Louis let out a breath, rolling onto his side. He touched his hand to Harry's waist. His skin was so warm. He was so familiar, even after so long apart. "I love you. Before, like, I gave up everything for a chance with you and it ruined me. I'm not doing that again. I'm not saying no. I thought I was, but I'm not. I'm just saying that I don't know how I could ever fit into your life. I'm an admin assistant and I live two hundred and fifty miles from you. I'm trying to give you an out. I'm trying to make it easy for you to say I don't fit. I'm trying not to get hurt. Because you can hurt me really easily. I try and look hard or whatever but I'm not. I'm scared."

Harry pressed his cold fingertips to Louis's shoulder. "I don't want an out. You keep wanting to give me one because you think I don't want someone like you. You just don't realise someone like you is all I want. You're all I want."

Louis pulled the covers up, dislodging a grumpy Humph in the meantime. He came and sat in between Louis and Harry on the pillows instead, meaning Harry had to peer round him. "Way to ruin a moment, little one," Louis said. "Menace."

"Let me try and prove it to you that it could work. That me and you could work. Please, Lou. Let me at least try. I swear you won't get hurt."

Louis touched his nose to Humph's. His whiskers tickled. Tomorrow it would just be back to Louis and his cat, and Harry probably wouldn't be seen for dust. Even trying would probably be a stupid fucking idea. 

"Louis," Harry said softly. "Louis."

"All right," Louis said finally. "Prove it to me."

Under the covers, Harry reached for Louis's hand, and Louis closed his eyes and tried not to think about how much this was all going to hurt when it went tits up. 

~*~

In the morning, the car arrived ten minutes early, when Harry was still drinking a cup of tea and holding Louis's hand. It was ten to four in the morning, and Louis felt like he was going to throw up. 

"Don't go," he said, before he could stop himself, Harry putting his mug down on the side and pulling him into a hug. "Please don't go."

"I have to," Harry said, his voice catching. He kissed Louis's ear, then his cheek, then cupped his face in his hands. "I have to, babe."

Louis's face crumpled. He wanted so badly to stay strong, but it was the middle of the fucking night, and Harry was leaving. 

"I'll be back. I swear."

"Okay," Louis said. He couldn't let himself believe that. It was too big a risk. 

"I love you," Harry told him. "I love you so much."

"You'll be late."

"They're early."

Louis was going to break down and sob. He shook his head. "Go," he said, before he did just that. "Please. Please just go."

Harry looked like he was about to cry too. He kissed Louis's cheek, then the corner of his mouth. 

Louis kissed him back, then stepped away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his tracksuit bottoms. "Go on." 

"Look after Humph," Harry said softly, picking up his stuff. "He needs you."

Louis nodded. "Stand up," he said, voice catching, and it was a long moment before either of them looked away. 

Harry shouldered his bag and opened the front door, Louis gathering an inquisitive Humph up into his arms and kissing the top of his head so that he didn't have to watch Harry pull the door shut after him. 

Louis waited until he'd heard the door downstairs close before he took his cat back to bed with him. 

He didn't cry. Humph mewed in his arms, a living, breathing reason to keep on going. 

"Just you and me now, little lad," Louis said quietly, even though there was no one to be quiet for anymore. "You and me, hey? You and me."

The silence resonated around him, his flat quiet and empty. He was alone. 

Humph bumped his nose against Louis's arm, and meowed.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am knackered, but I am not sick. It's a miracle. I actually feel okay. What is this world in which we live? 
> 
> Anyway, things I have googled recently include:  
> \- "how much vitamin C do you get from a narwhal?" (answer: the same amount of vitamin c in 1oz of narwhal skin as in 1oz of oranges, apparently.)  
> \- "what other cool stuff is there about narwhals?" (answer: OMG SO MUCH. Their horn is a TOOTH except it's soft on the outside and hard on the inside. No one knows what it's there for! Some narwhals don't have a horn.)  
> \- "frowny puppy" - you get a picture of Harry Styles on the image search for this. Google's algorithm has finally got it right.  
> \- "[goats that are cooler than you](http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/07/31/63573902332452410438333528_sunglasses%2520goat.imgopt1000x70.jpg)"

Work was as shit as he had imagined, the silence and the whispers following him round all morning. He'd been early in the end, his meeting with Willie cut short by Willie's calendar and another scheduled meeting, so he'd been at his desk with his headphones in before Lisa and Amanda had even arrived. He'd stared at his computer screen as they moved around him until the words blurred together, until Willie's gift of McDonald's breakfast threatened to turn his stomach upside down and he had to deep breathe his feelings into his hand and not let anyone know he was close to the edge. 

The article hadn't been _Harry's Kept Boy_ , but it almost might have been. _Harry's Secret Boyfriend_ who lived in squalor and had had someone pay off his lease was as good an implication as otherwise, and Louis might not be very bright, but even he could read a subtext as clear as this one. 

"Are you all right?" Lisa asked, when Louis finally took his headphones out so he could take an early lunch. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Nothing to tell," Louis lied, his heart pounding. He grabbed his coat and his bag. Everyone was looking. People had come over all morning on some crap customer service pretext or other. Louis had ignored them all. Margaret had been giving him the evil eye all morning. Maybe that job opportunity wouldn't be open to his application any more. His stomach kept turning over and over and over, anxiety twisting in his gut. "Newspapers make shit up."

"Not photos, though," Lisa persisted, hand to Louis's sleeve. "You can't deny the pictures." 

"Can't I?" Louis said, because none of the parts of his life fitted together and he kept being knocked from one bit to another and the bruises were starting to add up. People kept looking over and he'd been the focus of their big shared office all morning. He'd got virtually nothing done even though he'd stared fixedly at his screen all morning. 

There was a good chance he was going to throw up. 

"Just, I don't know, leave it, all right? Newspapers talk shit." His voice cracked, and the pity on Lisa's face was too much. Her hand on his sleeve slackened a little. 

"If you want to get lunch or something, just get out of here, no pressure, you know where I am."

"I can't," he said. He cleared his throat. Part of him wanted to take her up on it because he wanted to fit better into this life he'd chosen, but he couldn't. He just couldn't. "I've got to get out of here for a bit, all right?"

Her sympathy was painful. "Have a nice, relaxing lunch," she said, patting his arm. "Don't think about the newspapers."

"Back in a bit," he said, trying not to meet her eye. Being the dubiously kept ex-boyfriend of a pop star in the centre of a smear campaign was not how he'd intended this to play out. 

Nothing had really gone how he'd planned it, though. 

Louis spent the first twenty minutes of his lunchtime queuing up in Argos to buy a new mobile phone. He paid thirty quid for a brand he'd never heard of – a Huawei Y3, whatever one of them was – and then spent the second half of his lunch leeching the shopping centre WiFi to download WhatsApp as he sneakily charged his new phone whilst cupping someone else's old coffee in the corner of Starbucks. Unfortunately, a not-so-new and exciting low. 

He hadn't heard from Harry, but then, he hadn't really expected to. 

His meeting with Willie had been painful. Willie had been nice. Smart, in a suit even though it had been seven in the morning, whilst Louis had been up since half three and not been able to manage looking anything beyond passable. He'd taken copies of Louis's Non-Disclosure Agreement, and Harry's contact details, and talked a bit in general about NDAs and a little bit about revenge porn legislation. Without him having had an opportunity to comb through the paperwork in fine detail, Louis was reluctant to accept what Willie had said about the Non-Disclosure only applying to information that wasn't already in the public eye – meaning, if it were true, that _The Sun_ and its article had essentially freed Louis from having to keep the sheer knowledge that he and Harry had known each other and been in a relationship secret from here on in. The naked pictures they'd published, however, could maybe be grounds for a case if Louis wanted to go down that route; Willie had told him that it was unlikely that _The Sun_ could argue that Harry's sexuality and Louis's participation in the private photographs they'd published was something of genuine public interest. 

Apparently Louis could go to the police if he wanted. Report it as a crime. 

Louis wasn't sure about that. He just wanted to put it behind him. Put it all in a box and stick down the lid and never come back to it. He was meeting Willie again next week – provided, of course, that Harry came good on paying for Willie's time. Right now, he didn't want to think about it. 

He was in the middle of sending his first group WhatsApp to Liam and Niall (a, _got a new phone !! proper rubbish one but who cares cos at least I can text for free ! ☺ ☺ ☺ never be rid of me now xx_ ) when his phone buzzed with a message from Harry. 

_Hope work is ok. Just done an interview with heat. Will be on the cover tomorrow. New team is definitely on it. Miss you already. I know you don't have much credit so I'll ring you tonight. Hope you'll answer. This day seems like it's lasting forever. All the love. H xx_

Fuck. _Heat_. Fuck. His thumbs shook. _Got a new phone_ , he texted back. _Got whatsapp now. did you talk to heat about me?_

It was a few minutes before Harry replied, and then it was in WhatsApp. _I've downloaded it_ , his message said. _Talked a bit about you to heat. it's mostly about me though. And it'll all be good, I promise. I'm trying to be brave like you said._

Louis wasn’t sure he believed that anything published in a paper or a magazine could be good. He was tired of being scared all the time. He was tired of teetering on the edge. He didn't want it to be like this anymore. _You are brave_ , he sent back. He had to get back to the office. He was going to be late. _Hope it's not too bad and your not getting too bollocked. Theres nothing wrong with being gay and don’t let them tell you there is._

He didn't wait for a reply, unplugging his phone and leaving the cold remains of someone else's coffee on the table behind him as he headed back to work. 

~*~

The flat was weird without anyone else in it. He'd got used to Harry being there, to going to work and coming home and finding things a bit different to how he'd left them. A towel left somewhere else, his tea mug from breakfast washed up, the bed made or a plate by the sink. With Harry gone, everything was just the same as Louis had left it that morning, with the exception of Humph giving him a beady-eyed look and sulking because he'd been left alone. 

"I know," Louis said, dumping his coat and his bag on the floor so he could go over to the windowsill and give his cat a bit of a pet. "I know, baby, you've been all alone all day with no one to tell what to do."

Humph meowed, pressing his face to Louis's hand. 

Louis took his new phone out and took a picture of him stroking his cat. It wasn't as sharp or as good as the pictures an actually good phone would take, but he'd stayed a few minutes late at work to take advantage of the Wi-Fi and download Twitter. He had data that came with his top-up that he hadn't been able to use with his old phone, so it felt pretty good to be able to log in to his Twitter account – unused for months – and upload the picture of Humph. 

Maybe it was time to stop hiding. 

~*~

He should have turned his notifications off, and they came in so quickly that he crashed his phone trying to figure out how to stop them. It was easier to delete Twitter off his phone than it was to stop the notifications coming, so he did that instead, curling up in the corner of his sofa with his blanket over his knees and Humph grumpily kneading Louis's stomach with his paws. 

"I know," Louis said softly, as Humph meowed his displeasure. "I miss him too."

He stayed there, with the telly on in the background, his cat in his lap, and waited for Harry to call. 

~*~

Louis should have known he wouldn't.

~*~

It was two in the morning when Louis's phone rang, when he was startled awake by the unfamiliar sound of a ringtone he'd never picked out bursting into the bedroom like a foghorn. Humph, pissed off and scared, leapt off the bed and darted into the hallway, fur all on end. 

It said Harry's name on the screen. 

"It's the middle of the night," he said, after the call had rung out for too long and too loud. "Haz, it's the middle of the fucking night."

"I said I'd ring," Harry said stubbornly. He sounded tired, and wrung out, and just a little bit like he was asleep standing up. "I told you I'd ring and I'm ringing."

It was freezing. Louis pulled the duvet up over his head and hid under the covers. He hadn't felt like eating tea in the end and he'd gone to bed hungry; now he felt so hungry he could eat a horse. "Is this how it's going to be? You ringing me in the middle of the night when I've got work in the morning?"

"No," Harry said. "No, I promise. I swear it. Please, Lou. Please, just listen."

"You scared my cat."

"Tell him I'm sorry."

"I can't, he ran out."

"Of the flat?" Harry sounded scared. 

"No. Just the bedroom." Louis drew his knees up to his chest, trying to get warm. The air under the covers felt a little stuffy. "It's the middle of the night. You said you'd ring and you didn't."

"I was in meetings. Just meetings that went on and on. Like I'm not a person anymore, I'm just this thing. Like, a product, right? Sometimes it felt like I wasn't even there."

"It's two in the morning."

"I just got home. They're planning everything. It's just interview after interview after interview. I'm doing the Live Lounge on Radio 1 on Wednesday. When am I going to practice for that? I've got to do a cover."

Louis closed his eyes. It had taken him long enough to get to sleep; he was going to be the walking dead in the morning. "Do Secret Love Song. I'm cold and I'm tired, Haz. This was a stupid idea."

"No," Harry said. "Please. Please, Lou. Just five minutes. I'm sorry."

Louis didn't hang up. _Ask me about my day_ , he thought, trying to make it loud enough for Harry to hear. He breathed into the phone. He listened as Humph padded into the bedroom again and jumped onto the bed, trying to find a Louis-shaped human under the covers. 

"I miss you," Harry said instead. 

"Work was shit," Louis said. "Everyone's talking about me. The people who didn't know all knew by lunchtime. Everyone's looking at me and talking about you and what's the fucking point of even trying? It's been one day and we couldn't even manage that."

"No, please. Just—give me a chance. Just read the article in _Heat_ tomorrow, okay? Christ. I've been up, like, twenty-two and a half hours. I'm so tired I might just throw up. They've been on at me all day."

Louis was too exhausted to deal with this now. "I need to sleep. Can we just—can we talk about this tomorrow?"

"Are you breaking up with me?"

"We're not together," Louis said. He squeezed his eyes shut. 

Maybe he imagined Harry's hitched intake of breath. Maybe he didn't. 

Louis relented. "I'm not doing anything. I'm just—I'm tired. It's been a long day. I'm tired, Haz."

"I love you."

"I know," Louis said finally. "I love you too."

"God. All right. Go back to sleep and I'll talk to you tomorrow. Hug Humph from me."

"Will do." When he put the phone down, he let Humph curl up in the small of his back, taking up most of the bed. That cat got away with too much. Louis suspected that wasn't going to change any time soon. 

~*~

The front of _Heat_ shouted _**Harry: I'm gay**_. Louis tucked it under his arm and handed over his card to the guy in the corner shop, ignoring his angry mutterings about card payments under five pounds. He barely had time before he went into work to read it, but he huddled in the bus shelter round the corner from his office, collar pulled up in a poor attempt at keeping some of the cold and the rain out, and opened the magazine, scanning down the page to see if he could see his name.

**Heat: And what about the hottie in the photographs? Louis Tomlinson? What's the truth to the rumours he's your boyfriend?**

HS: He was my boyfriend. You know, like, love at first sight? I met him in a bar and we hit it off straight away. If I wasn't sure I was gay before that night, I was by the time we'd finished talking. I knew it was worth risking everything to be with him.

**Heat: A fairytale!**

HS: Not really. He deserved someone a lot better than me. I wasn't ready to admit to being gay and that made him a secret. He gave up a lot to be with me and I didn’t do the same in return. I was too scared. I lost him because of it. None of it was his fault.

**Heat: So, what's the story now? Is it true you're getting back together?**

HS: I'd like it to be true. He took me in when I needed somebody. He's a good person. He never deserved any of this publicity and he's had to deal with a lot just because he used to be my boyfriend. I don't know if I'd want to go through that again if it was the other way around. But I'd like him to. 

**Heat: You're winning him over!**

HS: No. It's not—[Harry takes a moment to drink some of his tea. The last time we interviewed Harry a few months ago, he was on a macrobiotic smoothie diet. This time, he's on the cups of tea. He's brought us a packet of Jammie Dodgers, too. We definitely approve of the new and improved Harry Styles] I wasn't brave enough last time. I'm trying to show him that it's worth giving me another chance. 

**Heat: Is it working? Come on, which boy could resist a lovely boyfriend like you?**

HS: It's not about it working, I don't think. I'm trying to be braver. He told me to stand up and be who I am. He gave up such a lot last time. It's so easy to get caught up in the idea of fame, you know? Like it's a thing, and it's something you are. But it's not. You can be kind. You can be generous or mean or brave. It's an action. Fame isn't any of that. You just are it. I got caught up in that and lost my way a bit. I'm trying to find my way back. I'd like him to be there waiting for me when I get there, but he's his own person with his own life. I just want him to be happy. I don’t think he has been. Maybe he'll be happy with me and maybe it isn't meant to be, but if it is with me, I'm not lying about who I am anymore. Not to me and not to the world and not to him. Definitely not to him. I'm gay and I make music and I'm in love with another man. That's the way it is. 

Louis didn't read the rest of the article. He rolled the magazine up and shoved it into his rucksack. He was already late for work, but he got his phone out anyway. 

_You stood up_ , he texted. _Now it's my turn_.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LONG TIME NO SEE. What's happened in the meantime? I found out some more interesting narwhal facts, and scared the new Head of Some Department Or Other by telling him some when he was brought round and introduced to people. In my defence, he did ask. I learned a new word: catawumpus. Haven't used it in a sentence yet but I'm planning to. I bought a pair of jeans with a thigh rip and have wrestled with my soul long enough and hard enough to know that I need to take them back for the good of humanity. I haven't bought a single Mars Bar, which is not through design but has resulted in a net reduction in overall happiness nevertheless. Also I have discovered my signature scent, but I have not discovered how to afford to buy it. The perils of modern living. What a wild and reckless journey I'm living. We really are coming to the end of this story.

The room the budgeting class was being held in was upstairs in the library, the paint peeling a little, the whiteboard at the front of the room stained with old pen and smeared old lessons. The leader was a middle-aged lady named Jenny who'd written **BUDGETING – How do we do it and Why is it so important?** across the middle of the board. She was sitting on her hands on the desk at the front of the room, watching as a sign up sheet was going round the room on a rickety clipboard. 

Louis was in the corner of the room with his hands in his pockets, trying not to show how nervous he was. There was a mish-mash of people in the room, a couple of older ladies, a couple in their late twenties, a scruffy lad with one eye out of the window, a few other people like him who were refusing to make eye contact. He wasn't the oldest, which was nice. He'd worried that budgeting was something that all adults could do, and he'd somehow missed the bit where everyone learnt how to do it, but it looked like everyone else here had missed the lesson too. 

Jenny started the class with a clap of her hands, not wasting any time going round the room asking anyone to introduce themselves. It had taken Louis four attempts at walking by the library even to go in and he hadn't let himself go home after work on purpose, knowing he'd find the perfect excuse not to leave the house again. He had no interest in sharing his name with anyone else in the room. "Who here spends more than they earn?" she asked, barely waiting for people to put their hands up before speaking again. "Who spends less than they earn? Who here doesn't know the answer for sure?"

Louis gingerly put his hand up. So did everyone else in the room, including the people who'd put their hands up earlier. 

"Budgeting," Jenny said, "is a process of working out how much money you've got coming in, knowing how much you've got going out, and managing what's left over for everything else. Virtually every budgeting website or book will start with the same Charles Dickens quote, so I'm not going to try and buck the trend by doing something different. _Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result - happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds six, result - misery_. Who here knows that feeling? Who here has been at a point, or is at a point now where their money scares them so much that they pretend the problem doesn't exist? Has anyone hidden under the duvet pretending they're in control? Because I've done that. I was there. I know what it's like to be that scared, but now I'm in control of my money and I can show you how to get on that path too."

Louis had literally no idea how much money he had, or didn't have. He just knew that even Jenny talking to them all about money was stressing him out. He didn't know how much debt he had or how much trouble he was in. He knew he had money when he could pay by card and he knew he hadn't when it got declined. The rest of it was so far out of his control he couldn't ever imagine being able to get it all sorted. Even Harry sticking his oar in and paying whatever bills he could find was unlikely to have fixed it all; he wouldn't have ended up at the food bank more than once if there had been any kind of wriggle room in any of his finances. 

Jenny gave them a hand-out with a list of typical expenses on it, money that came out every month without fail, other expenses like food and bus fare and prescriptions, and things to save for like Christmas and holidays and moving house. 

Louis had used the last of the credit on one of his credit cards to buy presents for his mum and the girls for Christmas last year, and he hadn't looked at that card since. It had seemed easier than admitting he couldn't afford to buy anything. Now fear shrivelled up his insides, more things that were outside of his control, more bad choices he'd made that he'd got to deal with. He hadn't had a holiday in a long time. The last one he'd booked he hadn't gone on; Harry had left him instead, and the gîte in France had stayed empty. 

He was so tired of living like this, exhausted trying to make ends meet, of never being in control or being able to make choices out of anything other than necessity. He was a pawn in a game he'd never signed up to play, and he was so fucking sick of it he didn't know what to do with himself. 

He wanted his life back. 

Afterwards, armed with a handful of papers and a vague appreciation for paperwork, he headed towards home. Humph would be hungry and bored, and Louis needed a fluffy hug from a grumpy cat to wipe out the knowledge he'd had to sit through a basic class on what a budget was because he was too stupid to know this stuff instinctively like everyone else. 

His flat was cold when he got in, Humph padding quickly in to try and trip him up and tell him that he was late and he wanted some tea. 

"Me too, little lad," Louis said, bending down to give Humph a kiss on the top of his head. "Did you miss me?"

Humph meowed, winding his way between Louis's legs and making it even more complicated for Louis to get to the fridge to get the half a can of Tiger out of the door to tip it into his food bowl. 

"That's you sorted," Louis said, "now it's just me."

It was weird, coming home to food in his cupboards, the haphazard remains of Harry's big shop still filling up the shelves. The freezer had things like chicken kievs and fish fingers and steak pies for him to heat up; there were vegetables in the fridge that Harry had clearly thought that Louis might have started to like in the couple of years they'd been apart. 

He hadn't heard from Harry – apart from one message – all day. He opened his fridge, taking a picture of the insides, and sent a WhatsApp to Harry: _What do I have for my tea??_ It didn't immediately light up with a _Harry is typing_ notification, but then, Louis hadn't really expected it to. His text that morning had said, _busy all today ☹ will call when I can but promise it won't be 2am again_

It wasn't that Louis didn't want to try and fix this gap between them, to just give themselves another chance and see if they couldn't both be happier. It wasn't that at all. It was just hard, that was all, hard knowing that their lives were so completely, utterly, desperately different. He'd spoken to Margaret after lunch about applying for the customer service assistant job, gone to a class about how to pay his electricity and his gas bill without going into debt, and had put up with the slow, dawning realisation on the part of every single one of his co-workers that Harry had devoted at least part of his _Heat_ interview to talking about Louis. Coming back after lunch had meant seeing copies open to Harry's interview on at least six of the desks in their big office, constantly having to listen to people whispering, and having to deal with the bolshier of his colleagues wandering over to ask him directly if he was going to put Harry out of his misery. Either that or asking him what he was like in bed. 

Mostly the latter. 

People were dicks. It was going to make it a whole lot harder when Harry really did drop him, and he was left the embarrassed ex again. At least last time no one had known he'd been dumped by a pop star. 

"What am I going to eat, Humph?" Louis asked, opening first one cupboard then the next. It had been so long since he'd had the luxury of options that he'd forgotten how to pick. He sent Niall and Liam the same WhatsApp he'd sent Harry, the _what do I have for my tea???_ message that was still going unanswered. 

Niall immediately rang him. "You're eating late," he said, in lieu of hello.

"Been out," Louis said. He wanted to come clean but he didn't know how to say it. He'd been dealing with this alone for far too long, and all the way through the class all he'd wanted to do was just say it out loud. _I'm in trouble and I need your help_. "They had this thing on at the library. How to budget. I went to that."

Niall laughed. "What were you doing that for? I'd rather be at home. I would have had my tea ages ago."

Louis crouched down to stroke his cat. "I'm in a bit of debt," he said finally, and his heart thumped. "Got myself in a bit of a mess."

"Yeah?"

Louis kept petting his cat. His ridiculous, fluffy, grumpy cat monster. "Don't really know what I'm doing, if I'm honest, mate. Thought it might help, that thing tonight."

"Did it?"

Louis swallowed. "Dunno," he said. "Think what helped more was Harry paying every bill he could find when I wasn't fucking looking."

There was a pause. "Christ, mate. How many were there?"

"I didn't cancel my internet because the signal was shit," he said in the end. "It got cut off because I couldn't pay the bill. Or the penalties."

"Lou—"

"Think they were probably about to send the bailiffs round for that. I stopped opening the letters, so I don't properly know, but probably."

"I could have lent you the money for the internet, you idiot. What was it, twenty quid a month? I could have lent you that, tided you over."

"Yeah?" Louis asked, and that tightness in his chest was back, the one that was shame and fear and sheer fucking frustration because none of this came fucking easy. Being this poor wasn't one fucking wrong turn, it was one after another and nothing came cheap and he had fucking tried. He'd _tried_. He'd been trying for so long he was tired even trying to remember when it had started. "What about the leccy? Would you have paid that? Or the phone line? I never fucking used that phone and it was still costing me money. I reckon they've cut that off too by now. What about the council tax and the water and my stupid fucking bus fare?"

"Louis," Niall said softly. 

"What about food, would you have helped me with that?"

"Course I would. We both would do. Me or Liam."

Louis shook his head. "Would you have come with me to the food bank? If I'd asked? Would you have come with me? Because it's shit going by yourself."

There was quiet for a moment. "Tell me you didn't have to go to the fucking food bank, Lou. You would have come to us before going to the food bank."

Louis sank down onto the kitchen floor, and let Humph climb into his lap. He'd finished his tea and was quite happy to monopolise Louis's attention now that he was a full cat. 

"Why didn't you tell us?" Niall asked finally, when it must have been clear that Louis wasn't going to say anything. 

"Didn't tell anyone." 

"You told Harry."

"He tidied up. Saw it all. I didn't tell him anything."

"Louis, Christ. How bad is it?"

"I don't know. He paid a lot of stuff without me knowing. Don't know."

"But what, like, ball park are we talking?"

"Niall." Louis was tired and ashamed and hungry. "I don't know, all right? Thousands, probably, before Harry. Don't know how much it is now. More than a stupid free class at the library was going to help with. Didn't you ever wonder why it was always so fucking cold here when you came over? It's because I couldn't fucking afford to put the heating on. Or why I never really invited you guys over in the first place? Because I couldn't fucking afford it. And then, like, Harry just came back and, like, this stuff was killing me, right? I don't even know where to start, and I can't afford any of it, and then… like, he just paid off some of it. Like it didn't matter, or it was easy, or something? What's it fucking like, Niall? Having money? Cos this woman, Jenny, she ran the course at the library and she said she was like me but she's sorted now. She said it was hard but she's not got any debt any more, and I can't ever imagine being like that. How do you get like that?"

Niall let out a breath. "Lou," he said. "God, Lou. Did you tell anyone?"

"That I can't even fucking afford to buy food half the time? No, of course I didn't."

"You just did that massive supermarket order. I saw it. Me and Liam both did. Last week."

"Harry paid for all of that. Fucking hell. I'm such a fucking loser. I can't even pick out what to eat. Do you know the last time I had enough food in the house that there was this much fucking choice? Because I don't think I ever have before." He pressed his cheek into an unprotesting Humph's fur. "I don't know what to eat."

"I'll come over if you want," Niall said after a moment. "Make you something."

"I'm not a charity case."

"No one said you were," Niall said. "I like to cook and there's nothing on the telly and you're my mate, all right? I'll come over and do you something for your tea."

"It's nine o'clock."

"Even Cinderella's got another couple of fucking hours, mate." He paused. "It's all right if I ring Liam and get him to drive me, right? And if I tell him."

Louis didn't say, _everyone in the fucking country knows my fucking business, what difference is another person going to make_. These were his mates. He'd picked keeping this life over chucking it all in and going to London on Harry's coat tails. He didn't want to be that person any more, the one who took and took and took and couldn't ever give anything of value back. Just this once he wanted to work on being someone's equal. He wanted to be Harry's equal, taking control of his own life, figuring his shit out just like Harry was trying to do. 

There might not end up being a future for him and Harry, but it wasn't going to be because Louis wasn't trying to get his shit back on track. 

"Come over," he said finally. "Both of you. It's a bit rubbish being here by myself."

"I'll see you in a bit," Niall said, and once he'd hung up, Louis felt like it might just be a little bit easier to breathe. 

~*~

Niall did him a chicken kiev with a baked potato and some carrots. Liam – with Humph firmly ensconced on his lap and taking full advantage of Liam's distraction to be continually petted – spent most of the cooking time telling Louis off for not talking to them when he was in trouble. 

Half of Louis railed against being told off, but the other half – the lonely half – just felt an overwhelming sense of relief. 

"I promise," he said finally, when Niall served him his tea with a _voila_ , "if it ever gets really bad again, I'll tell you."

Niall sat down on the floor opposite the sofa. There wasn't exactly a giant selection of seats for guests to choose from. On the other hand, it was lucky Harry had made an attempt at hoovering last week because Humph shed fur like a tiny fur demon and Niall would probably be covered in it from sitting on the carpet. 

"We're your mates," Niall said, as Louis cut into his kiev. He fucking loved a kiev. "If you haven't got anyone else to go to, you can talk about stuff with us."

Louis's knife stilled. _If you haven't got anyone else to go to_. "I'm not alone," he said. "I mean. I don't know. You don't need to feel sorry for me. I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I'm all right. I always was all right."

"You weren't," Liam said. "You were hungry."

Louis looked down at his plate. He blinked away tears. He wasn't going to cry. "I tried," he said finally. "It wasn't like I didn't try. There just isn't ever enough money."

"How was the budgeting thing tonight, then?" Niall asked. "Was it helpful?"

"Papers are there," Louis said, pointing at the table. "I don't know. It feels like it's too far down the line for me. How the fuck am I supposed to know how much money I've got to spend if I've got no idea about how much I owe?" He took another bite of his kiev as Niall reached for them, watching as he read them. "I tried to get one of those Wonga loans, you know? The ones you can just call up for. Instead of going to the food bank. I know it was stupid. Don't look at me like that. You know what it fucking was, though? I didn't have any credit on my phone to ring them."

"My mate Andy got one of those. You know my mate from home? Him. He ended up paying, like, loads back. Loads and loads. Said they were more trouble than they were worth." Liam's brow furrowed. "What are you going to do now if you haven't got credit to ring one of us?"

"I'm not a charity case," Louis said again. "I'll sort this all out. You don't need to look out for me like that."

"We're your mates," Niall said. He was still flicking through the leaflets Jenny had given Louis earlier. "Do you want us to help you try and figure out all of this, too? We were going to do the pub quiz this week, but we could do this instead. Buy a few beers from the shop, it'll be well cheap in comparison to the pub. What do you reckon, Liam?"

"Totally," Liam said, ignoring Louis's protests. 

"It's embarrassing," Louis said finally, even though he was desperate for the help. "This is really fucking embarrassing."

"Nah," Niall said. "Embarrassing's falling arse over tit in the middle of Sainsbury's."

Liam went a startling shade of red. "No one was looking."

"I was," Niall said. "And I got a picture. I'll show you, Louis."

"Not as embarrassing as when you fell over at that golf thing. That was on the local news."

"Shut up," Niall said. "Shut up, both of you. That was nothing. Anyway, Louis, we're coming over to help you out."

"Fine," Louis said, flushing. "Whatever."

"Eat your tea before it gets cold," Niall said. "You're not getting your cat back until that's all gone."

Louis rolled his eyes, but he ate the rest of it. 

~*~

Harry called him at half eleven, just when Louis was crawling into bed with a grumpy fluff-ball taking up most of the duvet already. 

"You weren't asleep, were you?" 

"Nah," Louis said, but he almost was. "You're up late."

"Still rehearsing for the live lounge tomorrow. I've got a two minute break so I thought I'd try and ring." He paused. "What did you think of the article? Did you read it?"

"I read it."

"What did you think?"

Louis was exhausted and still full and his cat wouldn't give up the duvet. In a way, he felt further away from Harry than ever, their lives taking them in opposite directions. "Sounds like you're fighting for me, Haz."

"Maybe because I am," Harry told him. "Is it working?"

Louis tried to laugh. It didn't particularly work. "Yes," he said softly. "I think it is."

Harry let out a breath. "I love you."

"I know," Louis said. "You told everyone."

"I've got to get back to work. And you've got to get some sleep."

"We're working opposite ends of the clock."

"Just for a bit. I promise it's just for a bit."

Louis nodded. "Make sure they let you sleep," he said finally, trying to stifle a yawn. He failed. "You're no use to anyone if you fall over."

"I fall over anyway," Harry said. "But all right. Go on. I'll call you tomorrow."

"I'll try and listen to you on the radio."

"I'd like that."

Louis didn't know how to say goodbye. It felt weird, the two of them like this, Harry living this pop star life and Louis trying to sort his shit out, his life tiny and small in comparison. "I love you," he said in the end, and he didn't wait for Harry to say anything back before he hung up. 

Humph meowed, padding up onto the pillow to sit mostly on Louis's face. 

"You're a menace," Louis told him, removing him. "See if I love you the best now."

Humph meowed again, pitiful this time. 

"Yeah," Louis said, curling up under the covers and trying not to shiver, Humph still making his choice of where to take up the most room in Louis's bed. "You know I love you most."

"Meow," Humph said, satisfied, and promptly picked the pillow to fall asleep on. 

"Menace," Louis said again, his phone still in his hand. _All right_ , he thought. _All right_.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't have a Mars Bar today, but imagine how much better my day might have been if I had. I have just had a Tesco delivery though, and past!me apparently thought I might want eighteen Frubes, as if sucking yogurt out of a tube was the future I dreamed of as a child. It might be. I'll report back as I work through all eighteen. 
> 
> This chapter focuses quite a lot on meat paste, which isn't something I ever thought I'd have to say. Meat paste and a telephone call.
> 
> Things I have had to research: meat paste. 
> 
> Things I now know more about than I did this morning: meat paste. 
> 
> What a world.

Harry rang him the following day when Louis was in Morrisons after work, looking at meat paste. 

"Hiya," Harry said. "You're not still at work, are you?"

"Nope," Louis said brightly, trying to decide between chicken, beef, or ham and beef paste. "I'm done. I'm doing the big shop. Well. I'm buying bread and meat paste. And milk. Last of the big spenders, me."

There was a pause. "What's meat paste?"

"You know," Louis said, giving in and putting one jar of chicken and one of ham and beef paste into the basket. He gave the salmon paste a wide berth. Fish was evil unless it looked like a fish finger, or someone had battered it. "Meat spread in a jar. I'm going all out today. Morrisons Savers, it's 25p. I'm getting two, pushing that boat right out. 50p. Last of the big spenders." He looked at the ingredients. "Did you know that my ham and beef paste is 30% chicken? It's only 12% beef. I've got a maths GCSE. I mean, only just, but I've got one. Even I know that it should be chicken and ham paste."

"Are you all right?" Harry asked, after a short-ish pause. 

"Don't know," Louis said, making room in his basket next to his 36p loaf of bread and a pint of milk as he headed towards the check out. "I think I got called a prostitute today? But, like, not to my face, so that was okay."

"What the fuck," Harry said, his voice rising. "Who called you that?"

"Doesn't matter. This woman called Sandra. She always does my head in. Was asking who paid my rent and what I had to do for it. Doesn't matter. I don't care."

"Louis."

Louis shoved his stuff through the self checkout. The till beeped at him. An overly enthusiastic computer lady told him there was an unexpected item in the bagging area. He re-scanned his chicken paste whilst cradling his phone between his shoulder and his ear. "It's fine," he said, feeding five pence pieces into the cash slot. Sandwiches for the next week and a bit for 86p. Living the fucking dream. "I don't care."

"You do, though. And I do. That's shit, I'm sorry."

"Doesn't matter." Louis didn't have a bag because he never remembered a fucking carrier bag, and he wasn't paying 5p for one. "Hang on a second." He put his phone down on the scanner and tried to fit meat paste and milk into his rucksack. The bread wouldn't go, but he could carry that. He grabbed his phone back. "It's fine, though. I don’t care."

"Louis."

Outside it was raining but Louis had left his umbrella on a bus the month before and he hadn't got a new one. He hunched his shoulders. "I went to a budgeting thing at the library last night."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Like, it was totally basic. Designed for idiots like me who don't know what the fuck they're doing. Basic shit like _don't spend more than you earn_. Typical they have to fucking tell me that because apparently I don't fucking know."

"Fuck," Harry said. "Don't talk about yourself like that."

"Like what?" Louis said, angry because he was ashamed, and he missed Harry, and the rain was already dripping off his nose and his bread was getting wet. "Like I'm shit at it? Because I am. You know how shit I am, you fucking paid for it last week." His chest hurt and he was tired and he'd had to hear fucking Sandra mouth off about him at the coffee machine earlier. "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, or what you're doing even talking about me like I'm worth fighting for. What are you doing, telling people you want to be with me? What are they going to think when they find out I'm shit at everything?"

"Don't say that," Harry said. "It's rubbish. You're great. You're so great, and you're so strong and you don't even know it."

Louis sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Hearing Sandra talk about him like that had hurt so much. He'd known – of course he'd known – that people were going to talk about him now that he'd been in the paper, but that was different to actually hearing people believe what they'd read so heavily implied. "Don't say shit like that."

"Think about Humph. How well you've always looked after him."

"I can't buy him treats like he deserves."

"I think he'd pick you over treats."

"Dunno. He's a very particular cat."

"Like his owner, then." There was a pause. "I hate hearing you like this. What can I do?"

Louis was cradling his bread close to his chest as he jogged across the road towards his street. "I'm not a prostitute," he said finally. "You didn't keep me. I never had sex with you because of your money or what I could get from you. I'm scared if you give me anything it'll be like fucking paying me. And I don't know if it matters what you tell me, because people on the outside will always think it." 

"I love you," Harry said, and he sounded a little choked up. "Me and you, it's not a transaction. We're not in a shop. I want to be kind to you because people deserve kindness and you deserve kindness and so do I and there isn't enough of it in this world. I want to do things that make you happy because I want you to be happy. That's it. I don't know how to make it about that for you. I don't know how to show you that you just deserve it. Just like I deserve it. But, like, you're struggling and, like, you're so fixed on this idea that being an adult is about shouldering everything by yourself and never letting on that it's fucking you up, but I don't think it is. I don't think it's about that at all. You're always trying to do this by yourself, and I'm trying to tell you that you're not by yourself and you don't have to be. It doesn't have to be me, but there are people in your life. You've been trying to push them away so they don't see you mess up."

"Haz—"

"You haven't messed up. I've seen you. You think this is all because you could have done better and you didn't. It's not. It's just, like, I don't know. Bad luck."

"It's not bad luck." Louis crossed the road outside his house, juggling his damp loaf of bread as he tried to find his keys. "Bad luck's like dropping the eggs or forgetting to pay your phone bill once. I'm just fucking shit at all of it. You know, like, all I could think when I was at this budgeting things last night was just getting up in the middle of the room and saying _I can't do this anymore_ and _I need help_. No one else was doing that. Everyone else pays their bills and has enough money." He picked up his post from the step – more bills, it looked like – and went upstairs to his flat, letting himself in with a careful check for Humph. He shut the door behind him, shrugging off his wet clothes and his rucksack even as he heard Humph's familiar pad-pad-pad-pad as he ran out to say hello. Or, more likely: feed me. "Hello, baby. Did you miss me?"

"Course he missed you," Harry told him. 

Louis was damp through and through, but he scooped Humph up anyway, ignoring his pitiful meow as Louis went so curl up on his shitty sofa with Humph in his lap. "I don't know what's wrong with me today," he said finally, pulling the blanket over him so that he could get warm. "Ignore me. I'm being an idiot. I didn't even ask you how the radio went."

"Lou—"

"Was the live lounge okay? I tried to listen but I had to go on this shitty training and pretend to be enthusiastic about it. Like I don't know all about data protection already. It's not like I'm doing the job already or anything."

"I sang Secret Love Song."

Louis's shoulders dropped. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I wanted to do Secret Love Song part II, but it had to be, like, a single? So it had to be the Derulo version."

"I didn't know there was another version."

"It's on their album. It's great." He took a breath. "This money stuff doesn't make you a bad person, you know. I know you think it does."

"I don't think that."

"Something like it, then." 

"It's just, you know. It's a thing, innit?" He was damp and clammy and cold and his cat had stuck his claws into his arm. "Like, you know. Ideal boyfriend material, isn't it? Someone with mountains of debt and a shit job and no fucking idea how to fix any of it." He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know what I would have done without you coming along and paying some of that stuff off, you know. Bailiffs wouldn't have been able to take anything. Shit telly and a shit old laptop. The most valuable thing in the flat's Humph." He stopped. "Would they take Humph? They wouldn't take my cat, would they? They'd have to like, look after him and stuff. What if they didn't look after him? He's never been by himself."

"They won't take your cat. I won't let them."

"They might. You paid some stuff but what if there's more urgent stuff? I don't know. I don't know my arse from my elbow when it comes to this shit."

"They won't. Because if they come round you're going to ring me and I'll pay. Whatever they're coming to collect."

"You can't—"

"I can. Humph's safe. I promise."

"Christ," Louis said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Fucking hell."

"I think Liam and Niall might help you out, too. If you asked them."

Louis closed his eyes. "I told them. Last night. They're going to come over tomorrow night and help me go through all my papers. No hiding anything then, is there?"

"What did they say?"

"That they would have paid my internet bill." Humph's whiskers kept brushing Louis's cheeks. He shifted a little so that Humph's nose bumped into his. His own little grumpy fluff-bucket. "Bet they wouldn't have kept saying that if I'd told them how long it's all been going on, right?"

It was a minute before Harry spoke again. "I wish you'd be kinder to yourself. You never give yourself a break."

Louis huffed. "I would if I didn't keep messing up. Look at you going through all of this and I haven't asked how it's going. I went to some stupid free class at the library and you came out to everyone, and I'm going on like mine's the more important thing to talk about. Told you."

"Everyone already knew about me, though. It's just that I got to say it instead of someone saying it for me. I've been too busy to think about it, anyway. It's just been one interview or meeting or whatever after another. Not much time for figuring out what someone I've never met in Basingstoke thinks about the fact I want a boyfriend and I want it to be you."

"Don't pretend like this has been easy."

"I'm not. I just haven't stopped. I've only got a few minutes now and I'm talking to you instead of going on Twitter. I'll worry about the rest of it later. I'm just trying to do the stuff I need to. It's all coming so fast. There's no time to think about any of it. But, like, I think this is me standing up, you know? Like you said."

"I want my mum," Louis said softly, because Harry was coming out to the world but Louis just wanted to go home to his family. "I want my mum and I'm too scared to ring her in case she's ashamed of me."

"Oh, babe."

"All I've done is keep secrets from her. What if she doesn't want to know now?"

"I'm sure she wouldn't—"

"You don't even know her," Louis said, too quickly. There was silence. "Fuck."

"Sometimes you've got to take a risk. To get what you want, I mean. You've got to take a risk."

"I miss her so much."

"I know," Harry said, but how could he know? He'd never known anything about Louis's family. 

Louis didn't ask, _do you even know the names of my sisters?_ He didn't want to know the answer, and it wouldn't help even he did. There was no point raking over the past. "What do I tell her about you?"

"I don't know. Not to judge me by a threesome in a newspaper?"

"Christ." Louis let out a breath. Just the idea of his mum back in his life again, for her to be something more than ignored calls and unanswered text messages. If he waited until he was someone that wasn't going to let her down, he might be waiting forever. He just missed her being in his fucking life. It all felt like too much, like all of these secrets he'd been trying to juggle for so long were coming tumbling down, and in the middle of them all he was by himself, and he didn't want to be.

"Are you going to do it?"

Humph bumped his cold nose into Louis's neck, and meowed. He wanted his tea. "I don't want to hide anymore. I'm sick of being scared all the time."

"Me too," Harry said. "It's the worst. I love you."

"I know." He kept on saying that, and he didn't know why saying out loud that he'd heard it felt so important to him. Maybe because of all the things they'd never said and never heard over the years. Maybe acknowledging what they slipped into the gaps was important. Like slowly plastering over the cracks. "Have you got any time off coming up?"

"Hopefully. I'll find out the schedule and get back to you. Are you going to ring your mum?"

"Yeah. I really am."

"I've got to get back to work. They're waiting for me."

Louis curled tighter into his blanket, Humph protesting and jumping off his lap. He turned around twice for no good reason and then resettled himself on the arm of the sofa, by Louis's feet. "I love you."

"Yeah," Harry said. "I'll ring you when I get five minutes. But good luck. If it's anything like speaking to my mum, it'll be worth it in the end."

"Yeah. I hope so. Take care, love." 

After he'd rung off, Louis took a deep breath and opened his contacts on his phone.

When it got down to _Mum_ , he pressed call.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been an age. AN AGE. I can't really list all of the stupid things I have googled in the intervening period between the last part and this one, but a small sample of stupid things I have done include:
> 
> \- going cauliflower mad and spending a weekend eating cauliflower rice pilaf and cauliflower-based pizza until it's quite clear I never want to see a cauliflower of any sort ever again (that weekend was also this weekend),  
> \- cross-stitched a baby otter because I forgot how to write anything and had to keep busy somehow,  
> \- met a bake off contestant,  
> \- failed to write anything of any substance at all, for ages,  
> \- went to a hotel which had clearly been styled by someone who played The Sims and whose approach was "fit as many sofas and pointless end tables you can't use in as small a space as possible and then allow coach tours to play their own accordian music to dance to",  
> \- had an embarrassing skirt-related incident at work which ended with me having to literally buy a new skirt at lunchtime,  
> \- started to watch Smallville because my brother got me seasons 1,2,3, and 6 for Christmas last year (I don't know either), and  
> \- found my perfect handbag. 
> 
> Anyway, [here is a perfect little Humph-a-like on instagram](https://www.instagram.com/cat.nemo/).
> 
> Thank you very much to the people who looked this chapter over before I reworked it for approximately the ninth time. You are much appreciated. All errors are mine.

There was a mouse in Louis's flat. An actual mouse. It ran across the living room carpet from over by the table in the corner to over by the window, and fucking Humph was nowhere to be seen. Louis made a noise that sounded distinctly like a squawk. It was an odd, high-pitched, vaguely terrified kind of a noise, and in hindsight it might not have been the ideal kind of noise for Louis's mum to hear as she picked up the phone after weeks of radio silence. 

"Louis?" she asked, voice urgent. "What's wrong?"

"Mouse," Louis said, knees drawn up off the floor. "There's a mouse."

There was a pause. "Where, love?"

"In my living room," Louis said, heart pounding. It wasn't that he was scared of mice – he was an adult, and mice were tiny, and vaguely insignificant, and probably incapable of incapacitating him in any real or significant manner, but the fact remained that rodents were awful and Louis hated them. 

"Did you call me because you were scared of a mouse?"

"No," Louis said. "I was calling you anyway and the mouse showed up to scare the shit out of me. I thought I had a cat so that this didn't happen. _Humph_. Come and protect me." There came the sound of things falling over in the bathroom, but Louis was only one man and the mouse was still out there, waiting to strike. _Pinky and the Brain_ wasn't supposed to be a terrifying nightmare of a childhood cartoon, but Louis didn't make the rules. Humph could destroy everything in the flat so long as it included terrifying the mouse into running away.

"It's nice to hear from you," his mum said quietly. "I've been really worried. We've all been really worried."

Louis let out a breath. His chest felt tight. He would have liked to blame it on the mouse in his house but it wasn't that. It was everything else. Harry. Being shit at money. Being so shit he was living off meat paste sandwiches and shit teabags and hand outs from pop stars. 

"You haven't been answering your phone. I've been ringing and ringing."

"I didn't know what to say."

There was a pause. "Oh, Louis. You've been hiding so much."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"What's going on, love? How did you end up in the paper? How did you end up getting involved with someone like that Harry Styles?"

"Mum—" he was still damp from the rain outside, his work trousers sticking to him. He'd need to get them off and put them over a chair to dry if he was going to wear them dry in the morning, and it was freezing in the flat. He'd have to put the heating on to get them dry. "It's just—it's complicated." He didn't know how to get round the Non-Disclosure Agreement, even though Willie had told him that anything that was already in the papers was fair game. "Someone called me a prostitute today."

His mum hissed in a breath. "Who?"

"This woman at work. It doesn't matter."

"Why'd she do that?"

"Thought I was getting my rent paid for, I don't know. You'd think if I was getting paid for having sex, I wouldn't be in so much debt, right?" Humph padded in and jumped into his lap. He meowed in protest, probably at how damp Louis was, and Louis tried to nudge him in the general direction of where their new mousey flatmate was last spotted. His cat was perfect in many, many ways, but it was fast becoming clear that he was likely to manage a mouse invasion by completely ignoring their existence. 

"You're not, are you?"

"Not what?" Humph turned in a circle and settled down again in Louis's damp lap.

"Being paid for having sex."

This was what shame felt like, apparently. Shame and horror and a devastating distance between him and the people he loved the most. 

"No, Mum," he said finally. "No."

"I didn't know what you'd got yourself all caught up in," she said, and it sounded like she might be justifying it to herself more than to him. "You wouldn't answer your phone. All those articles and people talking about you and you wouldn't answer your phone. I almost turned up on your doorstep but I thought if you didn't want me around it was for a reason."

"It wasn't. I was just scared."

"Don't cut me out, love. Please don't cut me out. You don't need to go through the difficult bits by yourself. That's what I'm here for."

"I wanted to come home, but I couldn't afford it. I didn't know how I'd get Humph on the train either. And I didn't know what I'd say, anyway." 

"Why don't I come up to you, then? This weekend. Let's get all of this sorted out."

"You've got the girls," he said, trying to sound okay. He wasn't. He was so close to just breaking down and crying all over her. But she had enough to worry about without him being a terrible fucking adult all over the place. "Who'll look after them?"

"Your nan and granddad. Or their dad. Don't worry about them. I'll sort it all out. You're my gorgeous boy, Lou, and you need your mum sometimes just as much as they do. Being a grown up doesn't change that."

His voice caught on a sob. "Mum—"

"Oh, love," she said, a lovely, terrifying, desperately familiar sound down the end of the phone. "Don't cry. Please don't cry. You'll set me off."

"I'm sorry," he said, and he was crying and he couldn't stop himself this time and he didn't even know why he was so upset. "I'm so sorry."

"It's all right, darling. It's all right. I'll come up on Friday and we'll sort it all out. I promise. We'll sort it all out."

He wanted so desperately to believe her. He wanted so, so desperately for it to be true. 

~*~

Louis felt a bit better later on, after he'd got out of his damp clothes and had a shower. The mouse hadn't been seen since he'd been on the phone to his mum, and he'd discovered his trousers hadn't been that wet after all. A night over the back of chair might do the trick and he'd get to save on the heating. Humph had curled up on his lap, a round furry ball of grumpiness and little fluffy paws. Louis stroked his finger over one paw and Humph shifted a little, getting comfortable. Who needed the heating on when there was a fluffball willing to act as a personal electric blanket? 

Louis didn't like to think about whether Humph ever got cold. He'd have to be even more careful once the electric company had come round to fit a meter; he couldn't afford to lose the contents of his fridge and freezer as well as the rest of it. And here it was, the bits of adulthood he'd never considered before this year: the utility companies not trusting him to pay his bills and forcing him onto a meter. 

"You're all right, aren't you, little lad?" Louis asked, stroking down Humph's side. "You don't wish you were living somewhere else, with someone else looking after you? Think of all the dead good cat food you could get if you were being looked after by someone else."

Humph didn't reply – the upside of being a cat, all things considered – but he did stick his claws into Louis's thigh as he objected to having his tummy petted, which was probably answer indeed. 

It was late, and Louis should be going to bed. Work was hard enough at the moment without adding being exhausted to the mix, but if he went to bed he'd have to wake up again, and it was all going to be the same again. The same frustrations, the same bank balance – only less of it, because it was another fucking day, and that's what money did; it dribbled away like sand in an egg timer, except for him he never got to turn the timer over and give it all another go. There was a leak somewhere, sand disappearing so that when he got paid there was always less than the month before. 

He'd let his mum down. That was the thing. There wasn't any getting away from it. All the lies, all the secrets, all the times he'd pulled away because he couldn't tell her the truth about how bad things had got. All the missed calls and ignored voicemails and texts he'd not replied to. She'd expected better of him and he'd let her down. All the poor choices that kept adding up until it had come to this, sitting on his sofa with only his cat for company, scared because his mum was coming to stay for the weekend and there was nowhere to hide how big a fuck up he'd made of everything. She'd see it all, all of his failures and fuck-ups and mistakes. 

He'd never thought of himself as a coward before now. Or maybe he had. 

_I'm so scared_ , he typed into Whatsapp in a message to Harry. He didn't press send. Harry had stood up for him. Harry, who'd slept with two guys in one night and subsequently had his sexuality paraded on the front of every tabloid in the country but had managed to go back to work and give an interview to _Heat_ , Harry who wouldn't want to hear that Louis was terrified of telling his mum the whole truth. 

"This is what you signed up for, isn't it?" he told Humph. "A great big scaredy cat for a cat-daddy. You'd have been better off staying with Harry. He could at least have kept you in the manner you deserve." Christ. He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself and just fucking get on with it. It was just his _mum_ , for fuck's sake. His mum. He loved her so much he'd run away just so that she didn’t have to see him fail. 

He opened his text messages.

 _Are you still up?_ He typed in the end, a text because he didn't know if his mum used Whatsapp. 

A reply came a couple of minutes later, just when Louis had given up hope she was still up. _Just making some hot chocolate to take to bed. Is everything alright chickadee?_

Out of nowhere, his eyes filled with tears. _No_ , he texted back, pressing send before he could delete it and take it back. He scrubbed at his eyes. He wasn't going to cry again. He picked his phone up again, typing, _I can't wait to see you this weekend_. 

The reply came almost immediately, the beep-beep startling Humph up and out of his lap, claws akimbo. _Love you so much. Can't wait to see you. We'll fix all of this. Call me if you need me xxx_

Christ, he hoped she'd still feel the same once she saw how much of a mess he'd made of everything.

~*~

His mum was waiting for him when he got home on Friday night, her car parked opposite the flat. Because he was walking home from the bus stop, he saw her before she saw him, rain dripping off the end of his nose as he hurried towards her car. 

His mum. His _mum_. Christ, he was choked up and he hadn't even hugged her hello. 

"Mum," he called, speeding up to meet her. "Mum."

She looked up then, her face softening. She jumped out of the car as she saw him, tugging him into a hug even though the rain was coming down in sheets. 

"Baby," she said, pulling him closer. "Oh, Louis. I've missed you so much."

He wanted to hide his face in her neck and stay there, but the rain was terrible. She was already getting soaked. They both were, but Louis's umbrella was still missing and walking from the bus stop probably meant he looked like a drowned rat. He felt like one. "Come on," he said. "Let's get inside."

"There's bags," she said, and when he opened the boot he found a suitcase, two Tesco Bags for Life, two full Ikea bags, and a sports bag he hadn't seen in years. 

"Don't travel light, do you?" he said, trying to joke, but nerves made him tremble. 

"Get your keys ready, we'll make a run for it," she said, trying to shoulder the sports bag and make a grab for the Ikea bags. He made her carry the Tesco bags instead, and he did his best to hurry across the road in two trips with the big bags and the suitcase, fumbling with his keys in the stiff lock as he got them into the building and out of the rain. 

He couldn't meet her eyes. "It's upstairs," he said. "Is that door shut behind you? When we get in, just be careful not to let the cat out. He's had enough adventures recently."

His mum didn't say _this is nice_ as they went upstairs. It was harder showing her where he lived than it had been with Harry. With Harry it had been unexpected and the middle of the night, but he'd known his mum was coming and it was embarrassing, bringing her here. Cold and damp and full of cat. Cat, and a not-forgotten mouse that Humph had failed to catch and kill. He let her in awkwardly, trying to dump the bags in the hall and get the door shut behind them before Humph made a run for it and escaped into the rain again. 

"Meow," said Humph, pitifully, from where he was standing on the edge of the sink in the bathroom. Louis's toothbrush and toothpaste were on the floor, which wasn't where Louis had left them. 

"Menace," Louis said, and he still couldn’t look at his mum, so he bundled his cat up into a damp hug instead. "You've been having adventures again."

"Look at how big he's got," his mum said, coming a little closer. It was a squash in the hall, the three of them damply sandwiched into the space with all the bags. "The last time I saw him, he was a baby."

"Yeah," Louis said, kissing the top of Humph's head. "This is my little lad all grown up."

"And very nicely he's grown up too," his mum said. "Come on. Show me round so you can get those wet things off and I can give you a proper hug."

Christ, his mum. His _mum_. His heart ached. 

"In here," he said, showing her awkwardly into the living room, Humph still gathered up damply in his arms. He meowed imperatively, claws out, and Louis set him down, busying himself taking his coat off and ignoring the way it wasn't really waterproof anymore and his jumper was all damp. "Hungry, are you, Humph? Time for dinner, is it?" He couldn't turn around and watch his mum take it all in, the cold, damp smell, the ill-fitting curtains, the threadbare carpet and the battered old sofa and all the rest of the signs that Louis had been struggling to make ends meet for a very, very long time. He got the tin out of the fridge instead, spooning the remains into Humph's bowl before taking the tin over to the bin. 

"You could recycle that," his mum said. 

"I could," Louis agreed, "but some dickhead took the recycling box ages ago, and they won't take it if I just bag it up. They said I could have another one if I paid them, but I'm not paying thirty quid to recycle my beans cans, so, I don't know, I just lob them in the bin."

"Louis."

Louis dropped his shoulders. "It doesn't matter, all right, Mum? Like, of all the stuff that's going on, me recycling a tin isn't on my radar."

She smiled at that, soft and a little sad. She looked just the same as she always had, same long hair and familiar smile. It had just been ever such a long time since he'd seen her. He'd skipped going home for Christmas this year – like Harry had, not that he'd ever said it – because it was cheaper to have crap Amazon presents delivered than it was to buy a train ticket. And because he'd been terrified he wasn't going to be able to look his mum in the eye and lie and say he was okay. 

He couldn't do it now, and she knew he wasn't.

"Where'd you go?" she asked finally. "Where did you go that you thought I wouldn't follow? You're my son. I love you."

Louis turned away. "Do you want tea?" he asked, stepping over the cat to get to the fridge. 

"I brought some milk. I didn't know what you had and I didn't want to use up all of your stuff, so I brought supplies."

He put the kettle on to boil. It took forever and was probably on its last legs, just like everything else in the flat. "I've got stuff," he said finally. "I can give you milk for your tea, god."

"Louis—"

He shook his head. "I'm tired. It's been a long week. I'm sorry."

She smiled at him. It looked sad. "I've got some stuff for your fridge. Do you mind if I…" she trailed off. 

"Go ahead. Harry did me a big order last week, but I'm never going to eat it all. Probably need to throw half of it away. I don't know what to do with it."

"We'll cook it up," she said, pulling open the fridge door to take a look inside. "Me and you, we'll cook it up and put it in the freezer for you to have another time."

He reached past her for the remains of the milk. There was only enough really for one good cup of tea, but he didn't want her to know he didn't have enough in for them both, so he poured most of it into her mug and just a tiny dribble into his, hoping she wouldn't see. 

"What have you got in here, then?" his mum went on, having a bit of a root around in his fridge. "Carrots, well, some of them have gone, but we can do something with that. Celery? Onions. I've brought you some mince, maybe we could do a big chilli? Or a spaghetti bolognese, maybe. Get a lot of this veg used up. Fill up your freezer for you."

Christ. Louis had no fucking idea what this feeling was in his chest. He'd been watched all week, everyone at work knowing that Harry thought he was in love with him, everyone knowing about their secret relationship and Louis's squalid flat. Harry was doing a hundred million interviews and meetings, his team trying to make up for the onslaught of negative press over the past couple of weeks, and that didn't leave much time for them to catch up with each other that coincided with Louis being home from work and not being asleep. He still had the application to finish off for the customer service advisor job, and he had no idea what the fuck to write except, _please please stop me being this poor_. Everywhere he turned – his mum, Harry, Liam and Niall, Willie – people were trying to help him. Their well-meaning attempts at trying to cover up the fact that Louis had been alone and poor and out of luck for so long just made it worse. Everyone kept fucking bringing him food. He had so much food he didn't know what the fuck to do with it. He didn't know how to choose. He was going to have to throw food away because he couldn't eat it in time, and after so long of never quite having enough of the right thing to feel satisfied, it almost made him feel sick just thinking about it. 

Just once, just _once_ , he wanted it to be easy. 

"I can feed myself," he said, because meat paste sandwiches were fine and they were what he could afford and he was sick of never being good enough.

Her shoulders dropped. "I know," she said. "I was just trying to—I was trying to be helpful."

"You are," he said. "God, you are. It's fine. I'm being… fuck. Fuck, Mum, it's a dump. I'm so sorry you had to come here."

"I'd come anywhere. Anywhere you were, I'd come."

He nodded, but he wasn't sure if he meant it or not. Harry was working a million hour week and the only times he ever had a couple of minutes to ring it seemed that Louis was at work or squashed into a space half the size of himself on the bus on the way home. Or worse, asleep, and Louis was always like a bear with a sore head when he'd been woken up, and it was worse this week when everything made him feel like a complete and utter fucking failure, not least the fact that someone who was famous and a success mistakenly thought Louis was worth fighting for. 

"Have you heard from Harry?"

Louis shook his head. "Just texts. He's working all the time."

"No time to give you a ring?" She sounded a little disbelieving. 

"They're working him hard to make up for the time off he took." Even in his head it sounded like an excuse. Christ. Liam and Niall had come over last night, a couple of four-packs in hand and a bag of oven chips to go with frozen pizzas. They'd gone through all of Louis's piles of bills and letters from the utility companies and unopened letters and screwed up bits of paper from the box in the hall where Louis shoved his post. Liam had even gone downstairs into the hallway and gone through all the piles of post there for neighbours long gone to root out anything that Louis had ignored, arriving back upstairs with a handful to add to the pile. 

Louis, embarrassed and ashamed, had had to sit with his friends as they sorted out just how much fucking debt he was still in, and even worse he'd had to watch as Niall had got out a box of paperclips and some paper folders out of his rucksack – _nicked them from work_ , Niall had said, like turning up at a mate's with stationery was a normal thing for anyone who wasn't mates with Louis and his stupid fucking debt – and had started fixing all the papers together, leccy with leccy and gas with gas, on and on until all the piles were fixed together and there was only the problem of how Louis was supposed to continue to afford to eat and live to solve. 

They hadn't fixed that with a few cans of Heineken. Humph hadn't solved it either, although he'd done a pretty good job of repeatedly sitting down exactly where they were trying to work. Harry had taken the urgent edge off of it last week by waving his bank balance around and hopefully wafting the bailiffs away for a bit longer, but none of it really made the real problem go away. 

Louis was still Louis, and he still couldn't do any of it, and now his mum was here to see all of his mess in glorious technicolour too. 

"They can't be working him 24 hours a day," his mum said. 

"No," Louis said. "Probably not." He picked at a bit of food stuck to the counter top. He'd known this would happen. There was a larger world out there, bigger than Louis's living room and Louis's bed. 

"Oh, Louis. I'm sorry—"

"Doesn't matter," Louis said. "Drink your tea. There might be some biscuits left." Harry had bought him a multipack with his supermarket, rich shorties and nice biscuits and bourbons, and Louis was a greedy soul and he'd eaten most of them already. He liked a biscuit with his tea and he liked tea, so. 

"You're wet through," his mum said, after a pause. "Why don't you go and get changed before you catch a chill?"

"Mum—"

"I'm allowed to fuss. I know you look after yourself and you don't need your mum poking her nose in, but humour me just this once, all right?" She looked tired, and worried, and this was exactly what he'd been trying to avoid for so long. 

"All right." He put his tea down and motioned her over to the sofa. "I'll go get changed."

In his bedroom, changed into threadbare tracksuit bottoms and the warmest jumper he had, he texted Harry. _My mum's here and I'm scared shitless_. 

He waited a couple of minutes, but Harry didn't text back. He hadn't heard from him in over 24 hours. 

Maybe this was how it was supposed to go. 

"I've got some pictures of your sisters," his mum called. "And they've made you a card. Come and have your tea and have a look."

He wasn't going to cry. Not over something so stupid and little as a card from his sisters and his mum coming to stay. He was better than that. He was stronger than that. 

He went into the living room, hid his face in his mum's shoulder, and cried his fucking eyes out.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week an interview candidate was shown round our office for no real apparent reason, and particular emphasis was given to the giant data wall behind my desk, full of relevant stats and useful info, and -- right in the middle of the wall, right where the candidate was looking -- a giant scrawled quotation that said "I'VE NEVER HAD A MISDEMEANOUR WITH A BANANA". I hope they took from that something meaningful. In other news, slug penises are apparently as big as the slugs themselves (I didn't google that to find out whether it was true or not) and silverfish apparently do some kind of weird mating dance before, you know, having it off.

All things considered, crying himself out took at least fifteen minutes longer than he would have liked. By the time he'd run out of stuff to cry over, he was revolting and embarrassed and snotty and his eyes fucking hurt.

"That's it," his mum said, rubbing his back. "That's what you needed. Get it all out."

"Sorry," he said, scrubbing at his eyes and fighting the urge to pull away and stand on his own two feet. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. This is what mums are for, aren't they? Being a shoulder to cry on when you need it."

"Usually comes with an expiry date." He pulled down his sleeves over his hands and wiped at his eyes. "Usually when you stop being a kid."

"No." She kissed his temple. "Whenever and forever."

He sniffed, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. "Christ."

She rubbed his back. "How do you fancy a hot chocolate instead of that cold tea? I've brought some Options, and there's half a bag of marshmallows I had to wrestle from your sisters. And I've brought us some chilli to have for tea – got it out of the freezer this morning, so it should be just about defrosted, and we can warm that up with some rice after we've had a bit of a sit down together."

"Stop being nice to me. I've messed everything up." 

"No," she said softly, stroking his hair. "No, sweetheart. Never."

His eyes filled with tears and he scrubbed at them with his sleeve again. Humph jumped up into his lap, pressing his face into Louis's chest, paws padding at his stomach. He meowed pitifully, like he hadn't been fed in a month of Sundays. "Menace. Such a little menace, aren't you?"

Humph just meowed, and continued kneading Louis's stomach. 

"I'll put the kettle on again. Get that hot chocolate going."

"I do feed him, you know. He might act like I don't, but I do. I look after him. He's not hungry."

His mum looked desperately sad. "I know," she said. "Of course I know that."

Louis nodded, burying his face in Humph's fur. "I look after you," he said, and Humph meowed in response, digging his claws into Louis's lap. "Don't I?"

"Of course you do, Lou. He knows that."

Louis let Humph off his lap and into the warm spot his mum had just vacated. He drew his knees up to his chest. Everything felt weird and his eyes hurt and his chest felt tight. 

"Go and wash your face. You'll feel better after that, I promise."

"Mum—" He wasn't a little kid. 

"Don't you _mum_ me. Go and wash your face. It's always better after a little cry to wash your face."

There was nothing little about that cry. He'd probably snotted all over his mum's jumper. He stood up and went into the bathroom anyway, Humph trotting after him like a familiar. He sat in the bath whilst Louis splashed water onto his face in the sink, meowing when Louis accidentally got him wet. 

"Don't be a baby," Louis told him, in between drying his face and giving his towel a good sniff. It needed a wash. Because he didn't have the heating on, nothing ever dried properly and there was a pervading aroma of damp that always seemed to settle on his towels first. His mum wouldn't be used to this kind of cold in the flat, so once he was done in the kitchen he went into the bedroom to get the blankets off the bed. 

He'd left his phone on the pillow, and there was a message from Harry waiting for him. 

_Is your mum with you now? I thought she wasn't coming until the morning. I was scared when I talked to my mum too but it worked out and I'm sure it will work out between you and your mum too xxxxx_

The little bubble said that Harry was still typing. The next message seemed to take an age to arrive. 

_Sorry I've been off radar today. they changed the idea for my music video at the last minute so I spent most of the day in a warehouse in epping. Back in it tomorrow too, great! Don't know what time we'll get done tonight. Did get to go out at lunch though and I've sent something to you by courier so it should be with you sometime tonight. Didn't know your mum was going to be there so hopefully it's not too ridiculous. I miss you loads and I wish I hadn't been busy so much this week. I love you xx_

"Hot chocolate's ready, love," his mum called from the living room. "How many marshmallows do you want?"

"As many as you can fit in the mug," he called back, staring at his screen. 

_Thought youd forgotten me_ , he typed. _What have you sent me???_ He pressed send, then typed, _I love you_. He deleted it, going with _I haven't got you anything_ instead. 

_It's stupid_ , Harry's next message said. _Just thought you might be on your own tonight so I thought it might make you smile. And I couldn’t forget you. I told you. I'm not letting this go again. Im sorry ive been so busy. It wont always be like this._

"It's getting cold," his mum called, and Louis dragged himself through the hall and into the living room. 

"Harry's sending me something tonight," he said, bring the blankets after him. "By courier."

His mum looked a little nonplussed. "That's nice of him," she said after a moment. "He's been in touch, then?"

He nodded, coming over and hovering uncertainly by the sofa. His mum was going through one of the bags she'd brought with her. She had two Tupperware boxes – the kind that came from the Chinese takeaway and she washed out and put helpings of stuff in to freeze – of chilli laid out on the side and a bag of rice next to them. There was an apple pie from the bakery in Asda next to them, and last in line, a tin of custard powder. 

"Custard." He swallowed. "Will you make it so thick the spoon stands up in it?"

"That's not custard, it's concrete."

"It is not."

She rolled her eyes. "If you stir it, we can have it as thick as you like."

"Thanks," he said, mouth dry. He didn't know what to send back to Harry. _I'm so stupid I just cried all over my mum_ , perhaps, or _I don't know what the fuck I'm doing_ , or, _just come back and make everything fucking better. Wave a fucking magic wand._

"I'll put some rice on," his mum went on, bustling round the kitchen and unpacking bits of her bags. "What's the best pan?"

"They're both shit," Louis opened one of the cupboard doors. "There's a big one and a small one. The big one sticks and the small one's a bit bashed because I dropped it. I don't think it matters."

His mum looked at them with narrowed eyes before going for the big one, pouring water in from the kettle. She put the sauce in the smaller one and handed him a spoon. "You're going to be in charge of stirring."

"Mum—"

"Stir," she said. "Don't let it stick. Low heat to reheat, bits of it might still be frozen."

He ducked his head, hiding a smile. He'd always secretly liked helping his mum in the kitchen growing up, a few minutes of uninterrupted _them_ time whilst the girls were in the other room. He'd done things like stir sauces and custards and get plates out and count out knives and forks. Bits and pieces whilst his mum had bustled round him, holding things together just like she always had. 

She'd had him super young and then brought him up and his sisters, and she'd never ended up in as bad a financial situation as he had. Everywhere he looked there was something for him to compare himself to, and it never ended well. "I missed you," he said softly. He kept stirring out the chilli in the pan, not meeting his mum's eyes. "Just cos I wasn't ringing you… it wasn't because I didn't want to."

"What stopped you?"

He shrugged, still stirring. "Dunno."

The water was coming to a boil, and she tipped in some rice without measuring. "Give that a stir, will you?" Once he had, she put the lid on and turned the heat down. "I'm not someone you stop ringing, all right? If you can't ring me, you text. You email. You send me smoke signals. You send me pictures of what you're having for your tea. I want you in my life. I will always want you in my life. You're my gorgeous boy."

"I'm broke," he said finally, methodically stirring the chilli. "I owed thousands. Harry paid some of it off but I don't know how much is left. I couldn't afford to pay my mobile bill. I can't send you pictures or texts. I can't turn the heating on. They're going to put in a meter because I haven't been paying the bills. I'm cold. I'm so fucking tired of being cold."

"Louis—"

"Don't," he said. "I'm trying, all right? I'm trying to do better. I'm all right. My cat's all right. He got out and I thought I lost him, but I got him back. He got rained on and it was dark and I was so fucking scared but I found him." He kicked his foot against the bottom of the oven. "I think he was scared too. He hadn't been outside before. Liam and Niall and Harry helped me look."

His mum didn't say anything. Louis kept staring down at the pan. 

"Louis."

"Did you know that if you get beef paste from Morrisons, it's got more chicken than beef in? Or something like that. I told Harry on the phone and he didn't even know what meat paste was. I've been living off it for ages and he didn't even know what it was."

"Were you going hungry?" His mum's voice sounded weird, sort of odd and tight. 

Louis couldn't look at her. "Harry did me a big shop. Maybe they're right when they say I'm a prostitute, you know? All Harry did was pay for shit I should be paying for myself. He says I should be kinder to myself and I should let people in, but I don't get why, you know? Why would I fucking let you see me fail?"

"Oh, my love." His mum's voice caught. "My lovely boy. What have you been going through by yourself?"

"Don't be nice to me. I can't, all right? I just can't. Harry says if the bailiffs do come round, I should ring him and he'll pay it so I can keep my cat, but, like, maybe I don't deserve him? Like, Harry or Humph. Maybe Humph will be better off without me. Harry definitely would. He's dumped me once, and, like, he said he's less messed up and he's going to fight for me this time, but I don't get why, you know? Why'd he want someone who can't even keep the stupid fucking internet or put the heating on?"

"He's right, you know. You should be kinder to yourself. You should be so much kinder to yourself."

He sniffed, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "Don't you start."

"That cat of yours doesn't want to be anywhere else but here with you."

"He might."

"He doesn't, though."

"You don't know that."

"I think I do." She pulled him into a hug, and he went unwillingly, leaning into her side. "This Harry speaks a lot of sense, even if he does have threesomes in newspapers."

"He thinks he slept with them one after the other."

There was a pause. "Well, that's okay, then."

"It is. It would be either way. He wasn't hurting anyone. It's no one's business who he sleeps with."

"He was hurting you."

"He wasn't. Not then." He pulled away, going back to stirring.

"Okay. We'll sort it out. All of this. This weekend. We'll go through everything and get it sorted. Make a plan. Get some debt information. Maybe a loan or something, to get you through? We'll get some options. And whatever it takes, I'm never going to let you go hungry again. Not ever."

"I wasn't hungry." Never satisfied, but not starving. It wasn't the same thing. 

His mum kissed his temple. "Even so. Never again. We'll have a nice evening, you and me. We'll have our tea and watch a DVD and get an early night and tomorrow morning, we'll start sorting it all out."

"All right," Louis said softly, because it was shit, needing people like this. Needing people to look after him and fix the mess he'd made of being an adult. 

"All right," his mum echoed. "We'll be all right."

He might not believe it, but fuck, he wished she was right. 

~*~

The doorbell went just after half eight, when his mum was scrolling up and down the TV channels with Louis's dodgy remote, Humph curled up on her lap. Louis left her to it, going downstairs to find a box, hand delivered by a driver in a suit. Louis took it awkwardly. He'd sort of thought _courier_ meant DHL or Parcelforce or something, but it rather looked like Harry had had someone drive up from London with just a box for a passenger, and Louis could never fucking compete with that. 

"Are you driving back to London now?" he asked. When the guy nodded, Louis frowned. "All this way just to give me this?"

"Apparently it was important," the guy said. He smiled. "He's a nice guy. Very polite."

"Yes," Louis said, box cradled awkwardly in his arms. It was stuck together with a piece of Sellotape, Louis's address scrawled on a post-it note taped to the front. Apparently if you were sending something up in a car, there wasn't really the need to package it up like when it went through the post office. "Hope your journey back isn't too long."

The guy tipped him a wink. "I'm being paid for it," he said. "And if there's no one in the car I can listen to Terry Pratchett audiobooks all the way back."

"Good work if you can get it," Louis said, without really paying that much attention. He couldn't, not with Harry's box right there in front of him. When he went back upstairs, he put the box down on the sofa and looked at it. 

"Aren't you going to open it?" his mum asked, after a minute.

"He got some guy to drive it all the way here. All the way from wherever he's filming his music video."

"That's nice of him."

"Uh-huh." He perched on the arm of the sofa and picked at the sellotape. 

"Open it. Or go into the bedroom and open it if you don't want me to see."

"It's fine," he said, and ran his fingernail under the tape, opening up the box. Inside was a folded piece of paper that just said, _Wanted to give you a nice Friday night even if I wasn't there to share it with you. Be kind to yourself and give yourself a break. I love you. H x_

Packed underneath was a _Four Four Two_ footy magazine, and beneath that, a copy of _Q_. There was a big box of Maltesers and three packets of Asda sweets – cola bottles and strawberry laces and chocolate mice. Two bottles of Stella Artois and a big bag of prawn crackers cradled beside _Fast and Furious_ and _Paddington_ on DVD – a post-it note stuck to the front of _Paddington_ that said _not much DVD choice, sorry! but I loved this :)_ – and underneath that, a colouring book and a pack of coloured pencils and felt tips nestled next to a packet of cat treats. Lastly, a little teddy bear wearing a blue knitted jumper that said CONGRATULATIONS in red thread on the front. Another post-it note stuck to the bear's label said, _couldn't resist. Pretend it says something vaguely relevant. Didn't want to take its jumper off though. No naked bears :(_

Louis sat down on the sofa next to his mum and opened the bag of cat treats, methodically feeding one to Humph. 

"Well," his mum said. 

"Well," Louis said. "He didn't know you were here tonight. He thought you were coming tomorrow."

"It's a very thoughtful present. It's really nice, Lou."

"He's really nice," Louis said, reading the back of _Paddington_ without taking any of it in. "He fucks up and we're a mess but he's trying."

"You could do worse than someone who tries, maybe."

"Maybe. He could do better than me, though."

"No. He couldn't. He's lucky to even have a chance with you. Anyone would be."

Louis laughed at that. It hurt. "I'm a loser, Mum."

She stroked Humph. "You're not, sweetheart. You're really not."

"I am," he said. "A stupid fucking loser that he's going to dump again as soon as he realises how much hard work I am. And when he's gone, who am I going to ring if the bailiffs want to take Humph?"

"Me," his mum said, and she sounded choked up. "You ring me."

He wanted to nod but he couldn't. He just had the little bear in his hand, the _CONGRATULATIONS_ on its jumper a mocking reminder that he wasn't anything to be proud of. "Pick a DVD," he told her, "I'm going to ring Harry. Tell him thanks."

"All right," she said softly, and Louis thought she might look like she was going to cry. 

He turned the other way, and went through to the bedroom to hide. 

He didn't expect Harry to answer his WhatsApp asking him to call when he was free, but Louis still had his phone in his hand when it started to ring. 

"Did you get it?" Harry said, in lieu of hello. "I just got a message to say it had been delivered."

"You idiot," Louis said, instead of thank you. He pressed his fingers to his eyes. "That guy had to drive it all the way up here. That's ridiculous."

"It's not ridiculous if you liked it," Harry persisted. "It's only ridiculous if you hated it."

Louis tried very hard not to cry. God, he really needed to stop crying. "It was really kind. My mum thought it was really kind too."

"Good." There was a pause. "Are you okay? You sound upset. Is everything all right with your mum?"

"It's fine. Aren't you working?"

"Something's gone wrong with one of the lighting rigs, I don't know. We only had one thing left to do tonight so we're just going to start with that in the morning and go on until we're done, I suppose. It's fine. We'll be done by the end of tomorrow, whenever that is. I'm just waiting for the car to take me home."

"Long day."

"Yeah. Speaking of which, when's your mum going on Sunday?"

Louis didn't want to think about her going. "In the afternoon, I think."

"I was thinking. We've only got the warehouse tomorrow and then I'm off on Sunday. Don't have anything until Monday lunch. I thought I might come up after your mum's gone and spend the night, unless you didn't want me to. Get a car back in the morning. I know it's not much and I get less busy after the middle of the week but I want to see you."

"All right. Yeah." Louis wanted him here now but he didn't say it out loud. He just… he needed people so much and he hated it. Other people coped by themselves all the time. He pulled his knees up to his chest. 

"Brilliant. Hang on two seconds, I'm just getting in the car." There was a pause, a car door opening and closing, Harry saying _hi_ to the driver. "Back."

"You sent me a box all the way up here." Fuck, he wasn't going to cry. It felt like he'd been falling forever and tonight was just him hitting the ground. It stole the breath from his body and he wanted to sob. "Why'd you do that?"

"Because I missed you and I wanted you to have something nice. Are you sure you're okay?"

Louis's voice caught. He wiped his nose. "I miss you. I don't know what I'm doing and I'm scared all the time and I miss you." He swallowed. "I can't do this anymore. I can't be by myself and deal with all of this. I can't do it anymore. I'm so tired of being by myself."

"You're not," Harry said. He sounded upset too. "All these people who love you. You don't have to be by yourself anymore. I swear. You're not alone."

"I need help," Louis said, and his chest felt like it was closing in on him. "I need help, Harry."

"Okay. Okay, babe. We'll sort it." There was a pause. "Where are you now?"

"Bedroom."

"Where's Humph?"

"With my mum, I think."

"Babe, I want you to go and find your mum, all right? Take the phone through with you. Tell her what you told me."

"I don't want to. Anyway, she probably already knows."

"You need to actually tell her, though. I'm not there and someone else is. And it doesn't matter if she already knows. It won't hurt to say it again."

"I feel like a failure."

"You're not. You're so not, Lou. You're the strongest person I've ever met."

"Come up first thing on Sunday," Louis said quickly. "Come and have lunch here with me and my mum. Don't wait until after she's gone."

Harry sounded a little choked up. "You sure?"

"Yeah," he said. "Please." He needed the bits of his life to stop being so rigidly separate. It was tearing him apart. 

"Okay. Now go and see your mum. I'll stay on the phone."

Louis nodded, even though Harry couldn't see him. He got to his feet, phone pressed to his ear, and went back through into the living room. Humph was curled up in his mum's lap, and the _Paddington_ DVD menu screen was on the telly. There was a hot water bottle on the sofa next to his mum, the one he'd had when he was little with the Dennis the Menace cover. His mum must have brought it with her because she knew she'd be cold. She was scrolling through her phone. 

"Mum," he said softly, his voice catching. She looked up. "I need help. I can't do this anymore by myself." He heard Harry's soft intake of breath over the phone. "I need help."

"Oh, sweetheart," she said, making space for him on the sofa next to her. 

He crawled under the blanket with the hot water bottle between them, his phone still pressed to his ear. 

"You don't have to be by yourself any more, I promise. You've got us." Her voice shook. "We'll get you all the help you need. Bright and early tomorrow. We'll sort out just what you need."

"I've missed you so much," Louis said, and he had no idea if he was saying it to Harry or to his mum, but maybe it didn't matter. Humph meowed at him, standing up grumpily so he could come and press his face to Louis's hand before settling down with his claws in Louis's thigh. "I just kept missing you."

"You don't have to any more," his mum said, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. "We've got you."

Louis didn't cry this time, but Harry stayed on the phone even so, even as they pressed play on the DVD, even as Louis went back through the parcel again. Harry stayed on the phone with him for the whole of his journey home, and just for once, Louis felt like maybe it was going to turn out all right.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [this](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cute+sea+creatures&safe=off&espv=2&biw=1438&bih=725&site=webhp&tbm=isch&imgil=dwMdx2VRf1txzM%253A%253By8NxsY1Pmu2s0M%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.pinterest.com%25252Fpin%25252F325174035570531931%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=dwMdx2VRf1txzM%253A%252Cy8NxsY1Pmu2s0M%252C_&usg=__HYbL4nAY5O-tO3Go5m7-2u0tqcM%3D&ved=0ahUKEwitrKaAurDPAhXpD8AKHRGrDwAQyjcINw&ei=ct_qV62rIemfgAaR1j4#safe=off&tbm=isch&q=cute+animals) is the worst google search I have ever done in my whole entire life. [help](http://www.pets4homes.co.uk/images/classifieds/2013/06/23/341042/large/dwarf-angora-babies-for-sale-51c6eabfac76a.jpg) [help](http://img.brainjet.com/slides/2/4/9/9/4/1/2499414081/788c4049afbbd00f83e1de54fffe45e04cfcb61e.jpeg) [help](http://s10.favim.com/orig/160205/animals-cats-cute-animals-cute-cats-Favim.com-3961040.jpg) [help](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1a/06/6f/1a066ffa655422d743529698ef6f4a8c.jpg) [help](http://www.picsybuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/cat-wallpaper-2.jpg) [help](http://imgsplanet.com/pics/main/24/294091-cute-cat.jpg).
> 
> Anyway, enough of that. This week I had a migraine and the day after essentially crawled to Sainsburys for soup and orange juice and ibuprofen. Got ID'd buying ibuprofen because I apparently "looked like a teenager". I don't look like a teenager. Another Sainsbury's co-worker agreed that I did in fact look over 30. Don't know which is worse. At work we got into an ongoing argument about whether you can call fusili + bolognese sauce "spag bol" when it does not include any spaghetti (you can't. Spaghetti bolognese has to have spaghetti in it) and now we have an ongoing tally of wrong people vs right people on the wall. Yesterday I fell off my own sofa (I expected there to be more sofa than there was. There wasn't). If I can fit everything in, there should be one more chapter of this after this one.

When Louis stumbled out of bed and into the living room in the morning, his mum was up and dressed already, sitting on the sofa with her sleeping bag over her knees and her phone in hand. 

"Where's a good place to go for a cup of tea and a muffin round here?" she asked, tilting her head back so she could pat Louis's hand as he leaned over the back of the sofa. "I thought we could have some cereal here, then go out, have a cup of tea and a stab at putting together a list of everything we need to do this weekend."

"Mum," Louis managed, a little gruffly. He'd only just woken up, his eyes felt sore - a hangover from last night's crying fit - and he needed a cup of tea before he could really face a conversation about everything that was wrong in his life. He put the kettle on and his mum held her empty cup up so that he could take it off her and put a new teabag in each mug. "Can that wait?"

She smiled at him. It looked a little sad at the edges. "Sorry. How did you sleep, love?"

Louis shrugged, waiting for the kettle to boil. He'd woken up to Harry's little _congratulations_ bear sitting on his bedside table, a reminder that he hadn't told his mum that Harry was coming for lunch tomorrow. "Wish you'd taken my bed."

"I had the air bed," his mum said, patting the bed with her foot. She'd brought it with her, mattress and sleeping bag and hot water bottle and pillow. "I'm not throwing you out of your bed, Louis, so don't look at me like that. I slept fine. I had Humph sharing with me for a bit of the night, too."

"Mum—"

"We need an action plan for the weekend," she said again. Louis got a new tin of cat food out of the cupboard and forked half of it out into Humph's food bowl, putting the rest of it in the fridge. "The best way to do that is to get out of here and get a bit of a change of air. So, where can you get a cup of tea around here? And a nice blueberry muffin?"

Louis shrugged. The kettle was still boiling because it was the slowest, cheapest kettle in the world, so he poked at the waiting teabags with a spoon for no good reason. "Dunno. Don't eat out much." His mum looked like she was going to say something, and Louis really didn't want her feeling sorry for him quite this early in the morning. "There's a café in the library, I think. Don't know what it's like. I see people with cups of tea and stuff, so we could go there."

"Great," she said. "And I've got something I want you to think about, too. I've been on the phone to your dad—"

"What?"

"Checking up on the girls," his mum continued. "He misses you. I didn't realise you'd been avoiding his calls too."

Louis did something which might have counted as a shrug under any other circumstances. The kettle finished boiling so he poured water over the teabags.

"You need to speak to him, Louis. He's your dad."

Not properly. Not by blood. Louis shrugged again. 

"He misses you. We've had a bit of a chat and there's clearly a few bits and pieces you need around the flat, so how about we put a bit of a budget aside for that today? Have a think about what you might need most and we'll make a list. Me and your dad were thinking £100. And it's not for bills. It's for things like a new duvet and maybe some of those fleecy mattress protectors, things that will make you a bit warmer."

Louis didn't cry. It was an effort. "You don't need to."

"My lovely boy," she said. "I do. We do. It's not like we saw you to spoil you at Christmas or your birthday. You have a think about what you might need, and we'll make a list and see if we can't think about where we can get the best deals."

"Mum—"

"No, love," she said, reaching past him for the teaspoon. "You're not talking me out of this. We would have spent more than this if you'd come home for a few weekends anyway, keeping you in cereal and all the things we get in because we're having visitors. We've missed you so much, both of us, all of us, your sisters and me and I know your dad as well. Let us make it up to you. Let's get you back on an even keel and then we can figure out how to move forward."

Louis stirred one of the teas. "You can't afford that."

"Let me worry about that," she said. "Me and your dad. Not you." She kissed his temple. "Have some breakfast and then we'll go out and make a start."

He awkwardly jerked his head, a nod he couldn't take back. 

"That's my boy," his mum said. "Now pass the milk."

~*~

The café in the library was a hodge-podge affair, wobbly tables and a menu that appeared to be limited to cheese toasties, ham rolls, and chocolate chip muffins. It was quite busy for mid-morning on a Saturday but they got a table in the back corner, next to an art display that seemed to be mainly made up of old water bottles painted by primary school children. It seemed oddly shambolic, so Louis sat with his back to it and let his mum have the view. 

They had a muffin each and a big mug of tea, and his mum got out a spiral-bound notebook and a purple fluffy pen. 

"Nice pen," Louis said. 

"Christmas present from the twins. Now, what do we need to get done this weekend?"

"Dunno."

His mum's face softened. "One thing, Lou. Give me one thing."

He shrugged. "Figure out what I still owe, I don't know."

"Okay." She wrote it down. "What else?"

"Buy something for lunch tomorrow. Harry's coming up."

His mum glanced at him. There was a pause. "To eat with us?"

Louis nodded. He picked at a chip in the Formica. 

She didn't say anything for a bit. "We could do a chicken, have a roast?"

Louis looked up. "It's okay, right? If he comes?"

"It's your house," she said gently. "And I'd like to meet him."

"He's not bad. Don't hold the stuff in the papers against him."

"Lou. You didn't tell me about him. You moved to London to be with him and you never even mentioned his name."

"Mum. There was—" he stopped. "I don't know what I can talk about. I've got a lawyer. Harry's paying for him but he's nothing to do with the record label. He's Niall's cousin."

"A lawyer?" She looked stricken. 

"He's helping me straighten some stuff out," Louis said. "I'm not not telling you because I'm being difficult. I know I didn't tell you then, but it's not why I'm not telling you now. It's complicated."

"Are you okay?"

He nodded. "It's just one more thing, you know? Just one more thing. There's always one more thing. You know I came to some budgeting lesson they were putting on here? I felt like such an idiot. I had no idea what I was doing."

"You're not an idiot. Did they make you feel like one?" She looked like she was half on her feet already, ready to go and yell at the librarians like it was their fault Louis was thick. 

"She was good. It was useful." He picked at his muffin. "There's a charity shop on the high street that sells stuff dead cheap. We could go and see if there are any blankets or anything."

Her face softened. "Lou—"

"I don't know what those fleece mattress things are or where you get them, but you were on about them earlier. We should go somewhere and get one of those."

"You can get them at Primark. They'll warm you up. We'll get a couple of hot water bottles too, then you can put one under the duvet before you get ready for bed so it's all nice and warm when you get in."

Louis swallowed. "Can we drive to a supermarket too? If you buy Humph's food in big trays then it's cheaper, but I can't ever carry that much home."

"Course we can," she said. "We'll get the chicken for lunch tomorrow at the same time."

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I'm so sorry."

She covered his hand with her own. "None of that. It's today that matters. Today and tomorrow and everything after. Not yesterday or anything before."

"All right to say that."

"Yeah," she said. "It is."

~*~

Louis hung about at the bottom of the stairs before they left the library. The toilets were on the ground floor but the ladies were out of order so his mum had had to go upstairs. He scuffed his trainer against the book rack, shoving his hands in his pockets. There was a newspaper stand just to the left of the stairs, next to the noticeboard about all the things the library and the local community centre were putting on. He didn't look at the poster asking for donations to the local food bank; it all felt a little too close to home, particularly when he'd been on the other side and taking home the donations because he was too fucking hungry to go without any longer. 

The newspaper was full of job opportunities in the area and Louis only picked it up because he didn't want to look at the food bank poster any more. It was thin and flimsy and had adverts for things like 'warehouse operator', 'class 1 shunt driver' and 'night trunker'. None of those really even made any sense to him, let alone sounded appealing. Right at the bottom of page five, though, there was an advert for an administrative assistant at a charity. A children's centre. The annual salary was for £17,605, which was more than he was currently earning. _The role will be a mixture of general administration, record keeping, and reception work. The candidate must have excellent communication skills._

"What are you looking at?" his mum asked, coming down the stairs and peering over his shoulder. 

He showed her the paper, finger crooked over the advert. "I could do that," he said. "I mean, maybe."

"Course you could," she said. 

Louis's heart pounded. "I won't get it," he said, but he was already eyeing the computer banks over the other side of the library. There were some kids hanging round some of the computers in the corner, but they looked like they were about to leave. "I could print off the application pack, maybe. Just to look." Niall was good at CVs, he'd helped Liam get his current job. Maybe he'd help Louis with his. The closing date wasn't until Friday. There was time. He probably wouldn't get it, but, like, at least he could _look_. 

"Can't hurt to look," his mum agreed, hand in the small of his back. "Come on, they're leaving, let's grab that computer."

They printed off all the details, and Louis slid them into his rucksack, careful with them even though they were just a sheaf of papers. 

"Where next?" his mum asked as they emerged from inside the library. 

"Charity shop," Louis said, and he led the way down the road towards the shops. 

~*~

By the end of their shopping trip round town, Louis was the new owner of a 15 tog double duvet, duvet cover from the charity shop, pillow cases, mattress protectors, and pillow protectors from Primark, and a thick pink blanket which looked like it belonged to a nan and was full of holes – his mum said it was a cellular knit, whatever that meant, but she'd said it was in good condition and would keep him warm, which was enough of a reason to hand over £4.00 in the hospice shop. He had some new socks and pants, and a new pair of eight quid work trousers. There was also a new pair of pyjamas, four terrible books from the bargain basket outside the charity shop – his mum had been astounded he was reading books for fun, and he pretended it was because he enjoyed it instead of out of necessity because it was either that or constantly watch the telly – and a handful of rubbish DVDs from CEX because they were a couple of quid each and he'd liked _Red Dwarf_ growing up. 

He was also the new owner of a sim-only contract for his shit mobile phone, his mum refusing to take no for an answer as she'd dragged him into Three. His credit was too bad for him to get a contract, which was about as humiliating as it could be, so she'd set it up in her name. It was £16 a month, which Louis wasn't sure he had, but there was something undeniably reassuring about the idea of having texts and minutes and unlimited data. 

"I'm not having you not being able to call me if you need me," she told him, after she'd signed on the dotted line and the guy had disappeared to put the new sim in his phone. "No. None of that. You having a phone that you don't have to worry about is the first step to getting you back on your feet. You're not a one-man band, Louis. You're an army."

"Mum."

"Don't argue with me on this. Your sisters miss you and want to talk to you."

"I don't know if I can pay for it."

"Well, you don't need to worry about it for the next six months," she said. "I'm paying for it. Until you're back on your feet. Don't look at me like that. I'd spend more than that on cereal if you were living at home."

"I don't eat that much cereal," he grumbled, flushing a little. 

"Come on," his mum said. "We're getting you back on your feet. One less thing for you to worry about for a few months, all right?"

Part of him was too ashamed to look her in the eye, but the rest of him was so desperately relieved he could have sobbed with it. 

Just for once, he wanted to stop fucking worrying, and do okay. He just wished he could do it by himself, that was all. 

~*~

_you like roasts right cos that’s what were going to cook tomorrow for lunch_ , he typed into WhatsApp later on, when they'd just got out of the car at the big Asda and his mum had got a trolley. He could never get a trolley because he always had to carry his stuff home with him. He'd sort of forgotten how much he liked swerving round corners with a trolley.

Harry didn't message him back until Louis and his mum were in the pet food aisle, buying trays of Tiger cat food and three bags of Tiger cat litter. 

_Course I love roasts. Missing you loads. Hope youre having a good time with your mum and everything's ok xxxxx H_

Louis bit his lip as he pocketed his phone. 

"Everything all right?"

"Course," he said. "Harry likes roasts."

"Great," his mum said. "I just want to look for a new pan for you before we do the food shopping, and we'll need something to roast the chicken in, so let's go and check out the homewares, all right?"

She was wearing a determined look on her face, and Louis recognised that look. He recognised it from the times she'd marched into school to speak to his teachers or the time Anthony Greengrass had bitten him and she'd gone straight over to knock on Anthony's mum's door. "Mum—"

"We're just looking, all right?"

They weren't just looking. They looked at the pans for a bit then she put a cheap saucepan and a frying pan in the trolley, followed by a five quid George two-piece roasting tray set. After that, she marched right down the electrical goods aisle and picked up an electric radiator and put it in the trolley next to the cat food. It was £57.85, which was a stupid price for anything, and even stupider when Louis was supposed to be a fucking adult who looked after himself. 

"No," he complained, trying to take it out of the trolley. "Please, Mum, no. You can't afford that."

For the first time all day she looked angry. "You should have come to me months ago," she said instead, repacking the trolley so the box would stand up. "You've been cold all winter and I'm not having you be cold for another day, okay? Not another day."

"You're wasting your money."

She whirled round. "I am not wasting my money," she snapped. "You know what's wasting my money? Taking the girls out to the cinema and out for a pizza. All of us doing that, that costs about the same as this radiator, if not more if we go to Pizza Express. So we'll skip that for a while. We'll watch a DVD and get some frozen pizzas from Sainsburys instead. Make some popcorn at home."

"They're not going to go without because of me—"

"They aren't going without, Louis. They're not going without anything. You're the one going without, and there is a _difference_. There is a difference between you suffering and them not having as expensive a treat. They still get a treat and you get to be warm, so stop it. Stop thinking that you don't deserve to be warm, Louis. Stop thinking that you don't deserve me looking after you. Stop thinking that you can't come to me and ask for help when you need it, baby. It's breaking my heart."

Louis's face crumpled. He turned around and blinked furiously at the rows of vacuum cleaners and halogen heaters, fists clenched. He couldn't do anything right. He never, never, never did anything right. He couldn't even keep himself warm. All day long his mum had been handing over money that should have been going to his sisters, and all for stuff that he should have been able to afford and buy himself. Blankets and pillow cases and hot fucking water bottles and new socks and a stupid fucking pan. It was all too much. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. 

"You're my best boy," his mum said softly. "And I would do anything for you. I will do anything to make sure you're safe and warm. Anything, all right?"

"They shouldn't be going without because of me."

"They're not, baby. They're not." She slipped an arm around his shoulders. "We could even pick them out a DVD here. They'll like a present from their brother almost as much as they'd like to watch it with you."

"Please don't spend your money on me," he said finally, when he couldn't keep it inside, when he was sick of staring at boxes with Electrolux and Hoover and Dyson written on the side. "It's a bad investment."

"It's not," his mum said, and she sounded choked up too, on a Saturday afternoon in the back corner of Asda, "not ever. Never."

"Can we go home?"

"Okay. We'll get some stuff for dinner tomorrow and then we'll go."

"No, can we just go?"

She kissed his temple. "We need food, love. How are we going to impress this boy of yours if we've got nothing to offer him after we've promised him a roast?"

"He's not my boy."

"Oh, I don't know about that. We'll just get a chicken and some potatoes and a bit of veg. How about some Yorkshires? A bit of gravy to go with it all, too. We could get a steamed pudding for afters, too, have a bit more custard."

"Mum—"

"Let us help you get back on your feet, all right? All we want to do is give you a chance."

It was a long time before he nodded his _okay_. 

~*~

Later that evening, after they'd switched Louis's crap sheets for the warm, fluffy mattress protector, duvet, and blankets they'd bought earlier, they settled in the living room with the oil radiator on and Humph curled up by their feet. They were going through Louis's papers, putting them in order, his mum adding the latest bills and statements to the front of each pile. The ones that were up to date – thanks to Harry's bank account – were put in one pile and the ones with an outstanding balance were put in another. There was another credit card, one that Harry hadn't found, and the £1232 bill wasn't going to pay itself, no matter how much Louis looked at it. 

"Right," his mum said. "The only way we're going to get rid of that is if we pay more than the interest every month."

"Right," Louis said, since before Harry had shown up and paid off the backlog, that hadn't even been a possibility. He wasn't entirely sure it was now. He didn't really know how much interest _was_ , or how it was calculated, but he wasn't going to admit that he didn't even know the fucking basics. 

"I'd say switch it to a 0% balance, but I'm not sure your credit's good enough for that. We'll just have to plan round it." She put it in another pile, and added something to her notebook. "So far that's rent, gas, electric, water, council tax, credit card, and TV licence. We've got to check whether you're still paying BT, and cut that off if you are. I'm going to look after your mobile phone for the next six months, so that's one thing we can cross off the list. Are you looking at your payslips?"

His credit card bill was bigger than the amount he brought home every month after tax. Even with Harry paying so much off, it still seemed insurmountable. He went to get the sheets that he'd got from his library budgeting course, though, because he was sick to fucking death of failing, and when he came back he draped the blanket back over his knees and got his mum's fluffy pen. He filled in the box marked _rent_ , and then waited whilst his mum handed over things like his council tax bill so he could write the amount in the right box. He put an X in the box next to mobile phone, and one next to landline as well. Then he borrowed the calculator on his mum's phone to add it all up. 

"That's less than I earn," he said, in surprise. It was quite a bit less than he earned. 

His mum knocked her shoulder into his. "Maybe it's not as insurmountable as you thought, huh? We've still got to think about food, and your bus fare, and your internet, and fun money, and the cat food, and your credit card, but I think you should be able to work it so that it's about what you're bringing in every month, right?"

He wrote the approximate amount of his monthly bus pass in the box. "Only if I never need to buy clothes and I take sandwiches to work every day. Or if I never have to replace anything that's broken. And even if do that then I'll be paying this credit card off for forever."

"It's a start," she said. "Let's top your internet up and then you can get Direct Debits set up for all of these so that it comes out of your bank account and you don't have to worry about it."

"God," Louis said. It wasn't like he was ever going to be rich or rolling in it – or at this rate, have enough money for an occasional McDonalds – but maybe, just maybe, it felt like there was a way through. 

"A budget's definitely cause for us to break into that ice cream, right?"

"I haven't stuck to it yet."

She leaned over and kissed the top of his head. "You're an army. You're not on your own."

Louis scooped up Humph from where he was batting at a little stuffed mouse on a string, and tugged him into a hug. "Soon we'll be rich," he told Humph, who meowed a little pitifully at the loss of his stuffed mouse. "There'll be cat treats every day, how do you feel about that, hey, Humph? I know, you've got the heater now, I'm always going to come second to a radiator, but I bet you you'll miss me when I've got the cat treats."

"Louis," his mum said from over by the freezer, "that cat thinks the world of you. Stop giving him ideas."

"I'm giving him ideas above his station," Louis told her. "You're going to be king of cats, aren't you, little lad? The richest and the best cat. A radiator and cat treats. And you should see how many tins of cat food we got you today. You're going to be spoiled. We're not going to come close to running out for ages. You can be a cat king of total leisure." He touched his nose to Humph's, who meowed. "We've got to teach you how to catch mice, though. I thought you came, like, pre-loaded with that stuff, like when you get a new phone and it's got all that crap on it. We did get you when you were a very little cat, though."

His mum came over with two bowls of ice cream. It seemed weird to be eating ice cream under a blanket with a heater on, but sometimes life choices were life choices. 

"We should have got mouse traps."

"Nah, this one will put his paw in one and then he'll cry. I'll cope." 

"You hate mice."

"I hate my cat crying more." He rested his head on her shoulder, Humph turning round and round in a circle before settling down in his lap. "I'll cope."

"You will," his mum said, and she probably wasn't talking about their little rodent guest anymore. 

"Hopefully," he said, and the world didn't seem so hopeless anymore. 

~*~

The doorbell rang the following morning just as Louis's mum had covered the chicken with tin foil and put it on the side while they waited for the rubbish oven to heat up. 

Louis stood awkwardly by the fridge and didn't move. 

"It's raining outside," his mum said. "Are you just going to leave him out there?"

Harry was here. His Harry. Harry, who hadn't finished work until one in the morning and had then had a car pick him up first thing just so he could see Louis for less than 24 hours. 

"Go on, what are you waiting for?"

He bit his lip. "Be nice to him, all right?"

"Promise. Now go on, be off with you."

"Make sure Humph doesn't get out," he called after him, already letting himself out and hurrying down the stairs to the front hall. He could see Harry's outline through the glass, shoulders and stupid hair and what looked like a stupid hat to top it all off. He pulled open the door. 

"Hi," he said stupidly, because being confronted with a damp sort of boyfriend when his mum was upstairs with his cat was a little overwhelming. 

"Hi," Harry said, and he was holding flowers. "Can I come in?"

Louis's heart skittered in his chest. There was a girl over the other side of the road with her mouth hanging open. "Yeah," he said. "Here, let me take something." 

Harry was in a soft leather jacket and a stupid wide brimmed hat, a big weekend bag over one shoulder, flowers tucked into one hand, and a shopping bag in the other. His hair was curling out from underneath his hat, a woolly jumper with a stretched out neck peeking out from inside his jacket. He looked like he'd just woken up. 

Louis shut the door after him, trying to take the shoulder bag. "Here, let me—" He tried to take Harry's bag, but it got caught in the flowers. "Fuck."

"Let's just start again, all right?" Harry smiled at him. He'd got rained on, but only a little bit. "Maybe upstairs?"

Louis's hands trembled. He took the shopping bag, leaving Harry to fumble with his flowers and his bag. He took the stairs two at a time, nudging his flat door open with his foot. "Have you got Humph, Mum?"

"He's in here with me," his mum said, from behind the closed door into the living room. "Have you got Harry?"

"Almost." He went into the bedroom and put the shopping bag down on the bed, Harry following. He shed his flowers and his bag and his jacket, taking off his shoes too. Louis carried the flowers because he didn't know what else to do, and Harry and his mum were in the same place at the same time and he had no idea what to do with that other than just be fairly sure something was going to go wrong. 

"You've got new blankets," Harry said, taking the flowers off Louis. "And you've made your bed."

"Mum said I had to because I was having guests." Louis didn't know what to do with his hands. "Like you'd break up with me because I didn't make my bed or something." He glanced over at Harry. "I didn't know if we were, like, something we could break up or not."

Harry looked suddenly, desperately sad. "I brought you flowers," he said. "You and your mum. I don't care if you make your bed or not. I just want us to, like, have a chance."

Louis hadn't noticed there were two bunches of flowers in the same little carrying case thing. "Which one's mine?"

"The lilac ones. The yellow ones are for your mum. I just… I thought you might like something nice. I checked to see if they're dangerous for cats. They're not."

Louis looked studiously down at his feet for a moment. "Do you want to meet her?"

"She's going to think I'm pretty terrible, right?" 

"Dunno," Louis said. "I told her you didn't do anything wrong."

Harry looked at him. "I did loads of stuff wrong."

Louis shrugged, looking away again. "I dunno. Think she just sort of wants me to be happy."

Harry's jumper was all stretched out at the collar and the sleeves hung long. He'd had to push them up over his wrists, and they way he was holding himself made his wrists look oddly delicate. It was a strange thing to notice, the pulse of Louis's heart and the cock of Harry's wrists, the space between them where breath used to be. 

"I missed you," Harry said softly. 

"Yeah," Louis said. They hadn't touched, not really. His fingers twitched. 

Harry put the flowers down on the bed. "Do I get a hug?"

Louis looked up at that. Harry looked tired, violet smudges underneath his eyes, skin stretched a little thin. They'd both been fighting their own battles. "Yeah. Course."

Harry didn't give him a chance to take it back. He tugged Louis into a hug, arm wrapped around his back, cold nose pressed into Louis's hair. "Did you miss me?" he asked without letting go. His voice was all muffled in Louis's hair.

Louis tried to smile. Miss him? Louis had been alone for so long. He'd missed more than Harry. Stuck in suspended animation, trapped in endless mediocrity and breadline failures to budget. Just an endless cycle of forever trying to fight back and always fucking failing to break free of any of it. A life punctuated by cat feeds and a little fluffy fur-ball who, day after day, reminded him to keep on going. 

"I wished you were here," he said finally, which felt more like the truth. "I really fucking wished you were here."

Harry hugged him tighter, kissing his ear. "I want you to be happy too. It's not just your mum."

"I know," Louis said, and thought about kissing him. "I want it too, you know."

"Kettle's on," his mum called from the living room. "And this cat of yours is pining without you."

"Coming," Louis called back. He pulled back, touching the back of his hand to Harry's. "You ready to meet my mum?"

Harry took a deep breath and reached for the flowers. "Course I am," he said, and if they both knew he was lying, neither of them mentioned it. 

"Come on, then," Louis said, and held out his hand.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just have a little epilogue I want to write after this, so bear with me. I've had a lot of this chapter written for ages now but I couldn't make it work for the longest time. I didn't know whether to post it now or not. Normally at this point I talk about what weird stuff I've found on the internet in the interim, but I'll hold that over for another time. Thank you for waiting. <3
> 
> But before I go, [baby Humph](https://www.instagram.com/p/BLErBvnD2jS/).

"So," Louis's mum said carefully, putting the tea towel she was carrying down on the kitchen counter. "You're Harry."

Louis recognised that slight edge to his mum's voice. She was being perfectly polite, but without actually being all that friendly. It was how she spoke to people who bumped into her with wet umbrellas when they were shopping in town. He hadn't prepared Harry for anything other than _things were going to be okay_ , and whilst he tried to telegraph the change in direction to Harry, he wasn't actually telepathic, and more to the point, neither was Harry.

Harry stepped forward before Louis could head him off.

"I brought you some flowers." Harry held them out for Louis's mum and, to his credit, his hand wasn't shaking. "To say thank you for inviting me for Sunday dinner."

Louis knew that look on his mum's face, could recognise the tilt to her eyebrow. It was her _I'm not entirely on board with this_ look. It might have been helpful if she'd mentioned any of this before Harry was in the flat so that Louis could have prepared him better, or faked a nuclear war like in _Grease 2_ , or alternatively, cancelled the whole thing rather than deal with this on top of everything else.

"Harry checked the flowers were safe for cats," Louis said quickly. He'd grown up being a mouthy so-and-so, and he'd got it from his mum. If she had something to say, she was probably going to say it anyway, regardless of interruption, and Louis was only trying to put off the inevitable. 

But his mum stayed quiet, just holding the flowers. She was looking down at them with an odd, unfamiliar, slightly confused expression on her face. Louis couldn't quite understand it. There was a pause, then she said, "That's very kind of you, thank you."

She didn’t say anything else, and Louis took the opportunity to fill the gap. "We're having chicken and roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings and gravy for dinner."

"And vegetables," his mum added, but it sounded a little weird, and definitely too quiet for his mum. "Carrots and broccoli."

"All the best things," Harry said a little weakly, and Harry had been gone from Louis's life for a long time, but some things hadn't changed, and Louis could read Harry's awkwardness and nerves like they were leeching from every pore. "Do you need any help? I could chop something."

"It's fine. The chicken's only just gone in, so we won't be eating for about an hour and a half." His mum was still holding her flowers. "Why don't the two of you sit down and catch up instead? I hear you've been very busy recently."

"Mum." Louis didn't know what she meant by that but it sounded a little sharp. What had happened to his mum telling him that maybe a boy who was trying was worth keeping around?

Her shoulders dropped. She inclined her head, letting out a breath. "I just meant..." she stopped. "The two of you should sit down and catch up. I wanted to give that shower of yours a good clean before I leave, so I might as well go and do that now. I've already bleached your bin out, but I could give that a final rinse out at the same time. Give you two a chance to catch up."

"Honestly, you don't have to clean my bathroom. Come on."

"You're breathing in black mould in that bathroom. We got that spray in Asda, most of it will just wipe off after we put a first treatment of that on it."

"It's not that bad." Shame sat heavy on his skin. They'd picked up mould and mildew remover yesterday, and heavy duty cleaning gloves and cloths and some other bathroom cleaners, but Louis hadn't exactly thought about what that meant, and he hadn't exactly anticipated his mum going full-on Kim and Aggie in his bathroom. "I can do it." He wouldn't, but it still wasn't right that his mum was going to stand in his horrible shower and try to make it slightly less terrible. The flat was damp and describing it as being in a poor state of repair was being generous. No amount of mould and mildew treatment was going to make it anything less than what it was: a dump. Louis's chest tightened.

Humph wound his way around Louis's feet before padding over to his water bowl, little pink tongue darting out to lap the remains of his water up. He didn't seem bothered by the increase in people in the flat, and to Louis's secret relief, didn't seem to have chosen Harry as parent of choice. Not that Harry was taking him even if Humph had preferred him. He was Louis's. 

"I'm just going to give the shower a quick once-over," his mum went on, looking everywhere but directly at him. "And the kettle's been on. Why don't you make us all a cup of tea while I get started? Everything's better with a cup of tea, right?" She gave Harry a glance, depositing her flowers in the sink. "The two of you catch up. Keep Humph in here with you, that bathroom spray isn't going to do him any good at all."

Louis nodded, flipping the switch on the kettle again as his mum nudged past them both on the way to the bathroom. Tea was rubbish if it wasn't poured out the moment the water boiled. 

Harry waited until the door into the hall had closed behind her before he tipped forward and pressed his forehead to Louis's shoulder. "That went well," he said, voice muffled by Louis's hoodie.

"Sorry," Louis said. His mum had got three mugs out already, a teabag sitting inside each one, and he re-organised them, lining them up a bit differently on the side for no better reason than his mum had caught him off guard. "I thought she'd be all right. Well, you know. More all right than that."

"I wouldn't be all right, if I was her," Harry said, rubbing his cheek over Louis's shoulder before standing back up again. "I'd hate me too."

Louis let out a breath. He touched his hand to Harry's cheek. "She doesn't hate you. She thought that box you sent me was good. She liked that you tried. She said that's what mattered." He couldn’t quite remember what it was she'd actually said, but that was probably the gist. He didn't like the distance between then and now. 

"Do you want me to go? I will. I don't want to ruin things between you and your mum."

Louis shook his head. "No. Mum told me I was an army. She said I wasn't alone, and I had all of you. I don't want to be…" he stopped. "I'm on my own all the time. Or I was, anyway. I don't want to be anymore. I want you, and I want my mum, and I want Sunday lunch, all right? That's what I want."

Harry bit his lip as the kettle started to make a proper racket, practically vibrating off its stand. "It's all changing, isn't it? It's all different now."

Louis waited until the kettle finished boiling, but when the switch flicked off, Louis didn't immediately reach for it. He wasn't sure what Harry meant. It was _starting_ to be different. After so long struggling and lying and carrying a mountain of debt and never seeing any fucking way out, everything was beginning to seem that little bit brighter, like at some point there might be a fucking end to all of this, so at least _that_ was a bit more hopeful than it had been before. He poured water onto the teabags, put the kettle back down, then bumped his knuckles into Harry's hip. He'd never been shy about touches before, friendly or otherwise. He'd slipped in and out of hugs and touches and friendly slaps and all the rest of it like he'd meant to be there. He didn't really remember the moment where it had changed, the moment he'd started measuring out the time he spent in other people's space according to how fucking poor he was, and how much he hated how far he'd fallen.

Harry caught his hand in his, his big hand wrapped around Louis's fist.

"Bad different or good different?" Louis asked finally, still staring down at Harry's hand around his.

"Good different," Harry said. "At least… it is for me. I got so, like, caught up in it all. I thought being famous was everything. It's not, you know. It's just a bit of you. If it's too much it eats you up. You need the rest of it just so you remember how to breathe. I didn't know how to stop it being all of me."

"How are you going to stop it this time? How are you going to stop it getting bad again? Because last time it hurt." Louis swallowed, mindful of his mum in the next room, of Humph sitting by the feet and having a good lick of his bits like it was okay to just let it all hang out in the middle of the flat. "It hurt me. I got hurt."

Harry kept stroking his thumb over Louis's hand. It was sort of weirdly mesmerising. "I think I thought I had to change me to fit in. Like, whatever it took. But it's not worth it. Losing bits of me like that. Losing you."

Louis nodded. In a minute he'd have to get the milk from the fridge and scoop the teabags out and into the bin.

"My mum's coming down to London this week," Harry continued. "Just for a couple of days. I haven't seen her in ages." He paused. "She thinks I need good people around me. People I can trust with the bits of myself I give them. She says I need to give them even though it's scary. Do you think that?"

"Dunno." He pulled away from Harry's hand so he could go to the fridge and get the milk. "I don't know what I think. I think it's shit being by yourself." He was so tired of being alone. He didn't know what Harry was getting at. He didn't know what his mum was thinking or what Harry's mum was on about or what he was supposed to be doing.

"My mum always said I should be kind. She says being kind is the best thing we can do. I forgot that. I don't want to forget it anymore."

"Okay," Louis said. He picked out the teabags and dumped them on the edge of the sink because getting to the bin meant nudging Harry out of the way.

"I want to be kind to you," Harry said, even as Louis was pouring in the milk. Louis's hand jolted a little as Harry's hand came to rest on his hip. "If I had to pick one person to be kind to, it would be you."

Louis put the milk down. His chest hurt. "Why me?"

Harry's eyes were bright. "Because I love you. Because I wasn't always kind to you and I should have been. Because I think you deserve it and you're not always as kind to yourself as you should be."

Louis shook his head. "I don't know what you mean."

"I don't know if I'll ever get used to everyone knowing I like boys. I don't know if I'll ever properly get used to it being this thing that everyone thinks they can have an opinion on. I can't, like, I want to but I can't stop them. They're going to think what they want and say what they want and I can't stop that. That's the hard bit, you know? Knowing that they know and getting on with it anyway. But that's what I'm going to do, and it's the bit I want to do with you."

Louis looked up at that. "Harry—"

"I've talked about being gay and I've talked about messing things up with you and I've talked about being brave and being myself. I've talked about all of that but, like, it's always sort of been in the abstract, you know?"

Louis didn't know. He'd lost the thread.

"You told me to stand up. Say _this is me_." Louis didn't remember saying exactly that, but a lot of Harry being here before had settled into an awkward, desperate, too-fast blur in Louis's head. "I don't want to ever get up in the morning again and look in the mirror and not like who's looking back at me. Because that's what it was. I'd get up and look in the mirror and it'd be like, _famous_. That's what I was. I wasn't anything else. I want to be, like, a friend. Kind again. Someone my mum can be proud of."

"Your mum is proud of you."

"She loves me. That's not the same thing. I'm going to make her proud. I'm going to make you proud. I'm going to be someone your mum thinks is worthy of you."

"Harry. God."

"I kept thinking about it. About if I could do it all again, or if I could just take all the bad stuff away, and what I'd be left with. I want people to like me, like, actual me, not just this person they think is me."

"What are you going to do?"

"Don't know. Try and figure out who I am? I don't know. I'm so tired of not knowing."

Louis's heart thumped. "And at the end, when you've figured it out, what's that going to mean for me?"

Harry's eyes were bright. "I'm not sure," he said. "I'd like it to mean there's a chance for me and you. But it depends."

His chest felt tight. "On what?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "Whether I've done enough to make you trust me. Whether there's a space for me in your life."

Christ. "Shouldn't it be the other way round? I'm just—" he stopped. "This isn't going to change. I'm just going to be me. I'm the same person I was last time, except with worse credit. It's just this crap flat and this stupid job and this debt and me. You get me. Me and my cat. Aren't you going to want something, I don't know, better?"

"No," Harry said softly. "I want this. I want to try at this."

Louis swallowed. God, he'd missed Harry. So long without him and after a few days in his flat, suddenly the space in Louis's chest where Harry used to be was back, and opening up to let him in, and Louis had no fucking self-preservation skills. He'd missed him, and he wanted more, but they didn't fucking fit together. They existed on two separate planes of existence and he wasn't sure that trying was going to make it any easier when their lives were so different. He didn't want to get hurt again. He wanted this so much, but he didn't want to get hurt again. He'd wanted his mum's blessing. Just for fucking once, he'd wanted it to be easy. 

"Lou—"

"All right. Yeah. I'd better take the tea through to Mum," he said, and he knew he was running away, he knew it. He just needed a moment.

He left Harry standing with one hand resting on the back of the sofa, nodding awkwardly at him as he took the tea through to the bathroom.

"Tea," he said, putting it down on the back of the sink. His heartbeat skittered. He wasn't normally nervous but he hadn't been prepared for his mum's stilted reaction to Harry, and it wasn't as if he'd had much of either Harry or his mum in his life recently. He hadn't expected to referee them from the off.

His mum was giving his toilet a good scrub with the toilet brush. He'd had that brush for ages, a flimsy thing from the pound shop that wasn't going to stand up to much of his mum's fierce effort if the way the handle was bending was any particular indication. The bathroom stank of bleach. That mould and mildew spray was fucking potent.

"Keep Humph out of here," she told him, and Louis pushed the door shut behind him with his foot.

"Mum."

"What?"

"Be nice to him," he said. "Please. Just give him a chance. For me. Can we just, I don't know, sit down and have food and be nice to each other? I don't want this. I don't want it to be like this."

Her shoulders dropped. She put the toilet brush back in its little bowl. "Lou. A lot of this is his fault. I'm your mum. This is how we feel, mums, when our kids get hurt."

He let out a breath. "A lot of me getting hurt didn't happen, like, now, though. Some of it was a long time ago." Sometimes it didn't feel like a long time ago, that desperate, painful realisation that Harry wasn't coming to meet him for their holiday, that he was on a plane to Miami, like their relationship meant nothing. "You're angry at him for stuff that happened a long time ago. At some point you have to just be like, I don't know, it's in the past and you can't change it."

She stopped scrubbing his toilet bowl. "Can you do that?" she asked. "Because you're my kid, and you don't let things go. I don't and you don't. You've never let anything go. What's so different about this?"

He nudged his knee into the corner of the bath. "I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. It just hurts, though, dragging all that old stuff around. He's not the same person he was back then. He's changed."

His mum made a _hmm-hmm_ noise. 

"Mum."

"We believe they've changed. We believe they can change. That's where the problem usually lies."

"I've changed too, though. I've done all this by myself." He tapped his fingers against the sink. "And, like, he's not like my dad. My biological dad, I mean. He's not the same."

"Thank god." She gave the toilet bowl a lacklustre going over with the brush again. "I want you to be happy. I want you to be warm, and I want you to be loved, and I want you to be happy."

Louis sort of wanted to cry. "He makes me happy, Mum. He's always, always made me happy."

"Apart from when he's driven you to this."

"This isn't his fault. He did things wrong, but, like…" he stopped. "Please don't try and take this away from me. I can't. I just got you both back. Please don't make it hard all over again."

"God. Louis. I just want the best for you."

"So does Harry. Can't you just be happy you both want good stuff for me? I don't know. I thought you liked that he sent me parcels and bought me food and tried to look out for me."

"I did. I do." She sighed. "Look. Ignore me. I'm like one of those birds with all my feathers all fluffed out."

"Don't peck him to death or anything. I love him, all right? I love him."

His mum let out a big puff of breath. "Oh, baby," she said finally. "You're absolutely my son. Look at that heart of yours. You don't keep any of it back for you, do you? You give it all away."

"Yeah. I know."

She looked a little bit sad. "Okay. I'll try again, all right? We'll have a nice dinner. Just the three of us. Get to know each other."

"Yeah. Thanks." 

"Now, go on. Go back and spend some time with your lad. I won't be long in here, and it doesn't take two of us."

He nodded, turning around, one hand on the door handle. "Mum?"

"Yes, love?"

"I love you. I missed you."

She smiled at him then, eyes softening. "Always, darling. Always. Let's give this thing a go, okay? You and me and that lad of yours for lunch."

~*~

He didn't go straight back into the living room once he came out of the bathroom. Instead, he followed a meowing Humph into the bedroom, sitting down on the edge of the bed to scoop Humph up and into his lap. 

"Didn't go quite how I imagined," he told Humph softly, leaning in to bump noses.

Humph looked grumpy, which could have meant anything.

"I know," Louis told him. "You don't care so long as you get some chicken later on."

"Meow," Humph said, and Louis rolled his eyes, still hugging him.

"You've missed Harry too, haven't you, lad? And now you can be like _that_ with my mum. Dead close, right? A proper family for you. Lots of people to spoil you, that's what you deserve. Loads of people thinking you're great. Family all round."

There was a knock on his bedroom door, even though he hadn't closed it properly behind him. Harry stood awkwardly in the doorway.

"You all right?"

Louis nodded. He shifted over a bit so that there was room for Harry to come sit down. "Come say hey to Humph properly. He's missed you."

Harry managed half a smile. He sat down on the bed next to Louis and held out a crooked finger for Humph to sniff disdainfully. "Sir Humphrey," he said, nodding at him. He didn't look at Louis. "Did I push it too hard?"

"No." Louis scritched Humph's head so that he purred. "I'm just scared, aren't I? Like a proper loser. Missed you loads and then you turn up and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Proper rubbish."

Harry bumped his elbow into Louis's. "Never. I probably came on too strong. Saying all that."

Louis leaned into Harry's side, Humph curling up in his lap, tail fluffed out across Harry's thigh. "Usually the emotional stuff comes after the Yorkshire puddings. Natural order, innit?"

"Don't want to mess with the order," Harry agreed, after a moment. "Sorry."

"Nah, don't be. Just freaked out a bit." He tucked his hand into Harry's, pulse a little fast. "So, uh. Are we not doing kissing anymore?"

"God." Harry's gaze dropped from Louis's eyes to his mouth and back up again. His hand was hot in Louis's again. "Course we are."

Louis bit his lip. Humph was resettling in his lap, turning round in a circle and refusing to get comfortable. "Talk about doing everything backwards and upside down."

"Like that kiss in _The OC_ ," Harry said. "Seth and Summer. That was backwards and upside down."

Louis knew which kiss he meant. One of the only things they had managed in the past incarnation of their relationship was staying in and watching box sets. They'd done the whole of _One Tree Hill_. They just hadn't managed the part where they went outside, the two of them, together, and Louis had never got his OTH DVDs back after they'd broken up. "That's from _Spiderman_ , really."

" _The OC_ is better," Harry said stubbornly. He pushed his bottom lip out a little.

"Pouting doesn't suit you," Louis said, but he didn't particularly mean it, particularly as Harry had reached over to cup Louis's cheek in his hand.

"I missed you," Harry said, glancing down to Louis's mouth again. He leaned in, covering Louis's mouth with his own. "Missed you so much."

Louis kissed him back. He tasted like chewing gum. It was sweetly intimate and a little nervous and Louis smiled into their kiss, even as Harry was sitting back. "There we go," he said. "We did it all backwards."

Harry ducked his head, oddly shy.

"Missed you," Louis said softly. "Like having you here."

"Me too," Harry said. "Now I've just got to win your mum over."

"She's going to give us a go. She said. She's just all fluffed up like a bird, she said. Like, protecting her nest or something."

"Don't blame her," Harry said. "I know what it's like to want to protect you."

Louis rolled his eyes, but inside his chest felt a little fluttery and nervous. "I'm fine," he said. "Don't worry about me."

Harry touched his mouth to Louis's shoulder then, an odd graze of lips before he reached over to scratch Humph behind his ears. 

Louis, warm on the inside and nervous on the outside, slid his hand into Harry's, and didn't say anything. 

~*~

"I wanted to say thank you again for letting me come up today." Harry was running the water so they could make a start on the washing up after they'd finished dinner, and Louis had ducked out to go to the loo and take a break from awkward small talk.

He paused by the bathroom door to listen to his mum's response.

"It wasn't me, it was Louis," his mum said. "He's had a rough time of it. I'm not going to turn the one thing he's asked of me all weekend down, am I?"

Louis flushed, pushing open the door into the bathroom and making sure it was closed after him so that Humph couldn't get in. His mum swore she'd rinsed everything down multiple times but Louis wasn't risking anything, not when it came to Humph.

He could hear his cat meowing pitifully through the door all the time he was having a wee.

"Two seconds," Louis told his cat, running the water in a dutiful attempt at washing his hands. "Christ, anyone would think you weren't loved." He dried his hands on his trousers and did his best to keep Humph out of the bathroom as he went back out into the hall, bundling him up into a hug instead. He didn't mean to listen in to his mum's conversation with Harry, but it wasn't like he could help it. They weren't whispering, and a door pulled to wasn't the same as a closed door.

"You've got a part to play in this, you know," his mum was saying. "How alone he is. How much he's kept from us all. You made him ashamed of who he is. My boy. My Louis. Being here and seeing how much he's had to cope with by himself. You can't expect me to immediately be all right with you."

There was a long pause. "I know," Harry said finally. "You think I don't know that?"

Christ. Louis nudged open the door into the living room, waiting until Humph was in with him before he pushed it shut again with his foot. "Mum," he said. "Leave it. You promised you'd be nice."

"I said we'd have a nice dinner. And all I'm saying is he didn't treat you right. Getting you in the papers. Making you keep your relationship from us."

"Mum," Louis said again. "Please. Come on."

"No," Harry said. "Your mum's right. I did mess everything up. I did hurt you. I know that. I don't think it matters if I try to explain it. You hated me and you were right to."

"Yeah. Yeah, all of that's true. But, like, Mum—all you've said all weekend is that it doesn't matter about what got me here. It's about today and tomorrow and the next day. Or does that only count when we're talking about me failing?"

His mum stopped stacking plates up to go in the sink. There were two left over Yorkshire puddings on a baking tray. Maybe he'd eat one later like an odd kind of a cake. "Louis."

"Give him a chance, Mum. Please. I don't need the two of you going at each other." He really fucking didn't, and he wasn't going to let them fuck this up for him. Two of his most loved people in the world.

She sighed, nodding towards Harry. "You're not intending to get him in the papers again, are you?"

"I never intended it the first time."

"No," she said. "Didn't stop it happening, though." There was a pause. "You made him ashamed. My boy. Ashamed of who he was and who he was with."

"Mum, come on. Leave it."

Harry shook his head. His shoulders had slumped. "No, she's right. I know your mum's right. You know she's right too. A few weeks ago you hated me for it, and you weren't wrong."

"It's not your fault I ended up here, like this. It's not your fault I ended up being shit at money and having no idea how to sort my own shit out. Like, some of it, yeah, like, I'm not pretending it was easy to trust you again, but, like… I can't keep going over it. Mum, you can't hate him for something I don't hate him for anymore."

His mum sighed. "I don't hate him, love. Harry, I don't. You seem a very nice boy. I just. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page where Louis's concerned. Someone has to say it."

"No," Louis said. "No, they don't. If anyone does it would be me, but we're, like, trying. We've talked about it. We're still talking about it, but it's not like he's going to yell at me for running up all those credit card debts and I'm not going to yell at him for going to bed with someone who sold all those pictures of us to the papers. It's not his fault that happened."

"They were pictures of you, though, Lou." His mum's shoulders dropped. "All those people seeing the two of you in bed together."

"I know," Louis said. "But it's not our fault someone took them. You can't blame him for having them on his phone. That's not his fault." It didn't make the fact that intimate photos of the two of them had ended up in the papers any better, but regardless, it wasn't Harry's fault they had. He was the victim. They both were. "It's not my fault either."

"Louis."

"Mum, please. I'm trying to fix all this shit in my life and it would be easier if the two of you were getting on. You did it through dinner. For me, come on. Try and be friends while we try and figure our shit out."

"Fine," his mum said. "Fine, all right."

"I'm sorry," Harry said. "If I could change things I would, but I can't."

Louis slipped his hand into Harry's. It all felt so different to when Harry had shown up at his door in the middle of the night, scared and upset, and Louis had been torn between anger and feeling sorry for him, and anger had mostly won. Everything had seemed so hopeless and terrifying, and Louis had been carrying all that resentment and hurt and desperately futile fury around with him like a fucking sledge he couldn't stop dragging behind him. Things were finally starting to look up, and he was tired of looking back. He was so, so tired of looking back. He didn't want to be that person anymore. He wanted to be this one. "Stop saying that," Louis said. "I want this. I want you." He turned to his mum. "I want to try and work things out. I want to be with Harry."

Her shoulders dropped. "What if you get hurt?"

"I don't know. I get hurt. It happens. Are you going to tell me not to go for that job because it might suck if I don't get it?"

"You're going to get it. You're brilliant."

Louis rolled his eyes. "I might not."

"You're going for a job?" Harry asked. "What job?"

"It's just this rubbish admin one," Louis said. "Reception stuff, I think."

"At a children's charity," his mum said proudly. "You'll be great at it."

"You'll get it," Harry said.

"Okay, right, I get it, you two have more faith in me than I do, but that's not the point. The point is, you're not going to tell me not to try, right? Because I might not get it? And it's the same with Harry. I'm going to try. Because winning is worth it and losing doesn't make it not worth a punt."

Harry had a sink full of water and an overflowing bowl. Louis's mum reached over to turn the tap off. She turned back around and leaned against the counter. "I just want you to know how much you're worth. Because you're worth so much. To me, to your family. I feel like you forgot for a while and I don't want you going back there. I don't ever want you going back there. I don't want anything putting you back there."

"I don't want to go back there either," Louis said. "I don't want to feel like that again. But I asked for help. From both of you. That's got to be worth trying for, right? It has to be."

His mum leaned over and kissed his cheek. "You're right," she said, smoothing down his hair. 

"Mum, stop messing."

"It's sticking up."

"It's supposed to be." He fucked with his fringe without looking in a mirror. "Are we sorted?"

His mum looked at Harry, then back at Louis. "He's not someone you can pick up and put down again and forget about," she told Harry, but she was smiling. "You treat him right, all right?"

"Promise," Harry said, and his hand was hot in Louis's, but he didn't let go. "This time we're going to do it right."

~*~

His mum left late in the afternoon, in a flurry of empty IKEA bags and bags for life, Louis and Harry packing the back of the car as she did a last check round the flat for things that she'd left. 

"You give them all a kiss from me, all right?" Louis said, wrapping his mum up in a hug. "And a hug, too."

"You can give them one yourself," she told him, kissing his cheek. "Because you're coming home soon, right?"

He wasn't entirely sure how he was going to afford that, or how he was going to get Humph on a train even if he could afford it. "Course," he said, pulling away. 

Her eyes softened. "We'll sort it," she said. "If you don't know how you're going to manage something, you say so, all right? Then we think of the options." She glanced at Harry. "And if you don't say it to me, you say it to him, all right? Or these friends of yours. The good ones. Liam and Niall. Nothing's insurmountable."

"Yeah, okay," Louis said, and she hugged him again, then Harry, then him again, before climbing into the car. 

"Be good," she said, winding the window down.

"I always am," he said, pasting on his most innocent smile. 

Harry slipped an arm around his waist, tucking his fingertips into the pocket of Louis's tracksuit bottoms. "I'll keep him on the straight and narrow."

"See that you do." 

"Have a good trip back," Harry told her, and she winked at Louis. 

"Love you, Lou, " she said, and they stood on the pavement and watched as she drove away, until her tail lights merged into the traffic at the end of the road, and she was gone. 

Louis didn't cry. He stayed where he was instead, with Harry's arm around his waist, until the cold started to seep through his jacket and settle against his skin.

"We should go to the shop," Harry said finally. "Go and get some biscuits or something. A treat for Humph."

Louis glanced at him. "We don't need anything."

"No," Harry said, "but a bit of fresh air's probably good for us."

Louis's heart sped up a little. "Morrison's might still be open. Don't think it shuts 'til five on a Sunday."

"We'll just make it, then."

Louis pulled away. "You sure about this? Being seen in public with me?"

Harry reached for Louis's hand. "I am if you are," he said, lacing his fingers with Louis's, and Louis smiled. 

"All right," he said softly. "You're on."


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You're never alone. You're an army._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been a long time coming, but this is finally finished. Thank you to everyone who has taken Humph to their hearts, and who has waited around ages as I struggled to write anything. You are much appreciated. Last week at work I googled WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT DINER STORY to share that joy with the world (watch the video if you google that, the transcripts are nothing). I will continue in my epic quest to search for pictures of Humph even though this story is done, because it doesn't matter how bad your day is, a tiny, grumpy, fluffball of a cat will bring some comfort. Thanks for sticking around, guys. <3

It was almost lunchtime on Friday and Harry still wasn't awake. 

He'd shown up just before half past eight the previous evening, managed approximately a minute and a half of barely coherent conversation, gone for a wee, then faceplanted directly into the middle of Louis's bed and passed out. 

Louis had known that Harry's team had been working him pretty hard in the two weeks since they'd last seen each other, but the barely conscious Harry who'd shown up at Louis's door last night was about ten stages beyond exhausted, and he'd hardly moved at all in the 16 hours he'd already been snoring into Louis's second pillow. It was starting to look like Louis could have gone to work today as normal and saved the day's leave he'd taken to spend with Harry, but having said that, it wasn't like a morning lying about in bed and drinking tea was a particularly terrible plan in and of itself, and there were two additional upsides: 

a) he got to creepily stare at Harry flipping Styles without anyone around to make him feel awkward and weird about it, and,

b) he could manage more than a cursory glance through the emails Niall's cousin Willie had been sending him about the work he was doing on Louis's Non-Disclosure Agreement. 

Not that they were getting very far with that. Willie seemed pretty great at what he did, but he wasn't an experienced entertainment lawyer, and he was going up against Harry's record company's legal team, who were, and Harry himself was being particularly intransigent and refusing to accept anything less than the NDA being completely dissolved. Even Louis knew that the chances of that happening were less than zero. According to Willie, the most they might get was a redrafting of the contract with some slackening of the terms, and Louis would go for that if they could get it. He'd agree never to sell or distribute a story about him and Harry to any variation of the press or the media. He'd agree to whatever, so long as at the end of it he didn't feel like he had done these past couple of years, trapped and scared and uncertain and totally fucking alone. 

Anyway, apparently all he had to do now was talk Harry down from bargaining both his future and his own contract for the sake of Louis's so-called legal freedom, which was definitely easier said that done. Louis had long ago resigned himself to being bound by a stupid piece of paper he'd had no real option at the time but to go ahead and sign, but Harry just wasn't having any of it. He'd made some stupid threat to reveal every single piece of their history in a Wikileaks-style brain dump on the internet if only to put it all in the public sphere so that Louis was allowed to talk about it, but as that benefited nobody except Harry's innate sense of moral right and wrong, Louis had told him to stop being ridiculous and think of something actually useful. He'd tell him that again, if he ever bothered to wake the fuck up and remember Louis had the day off and hadn't had sex in a while. 

Not that Louis was single-minded, or anything. 

Okay, so he might have been a bit horny, but Harry was _here_ , and they had both been counting down the minutes until Harry had arrived last night, and mostly what he'd got for that was a brief, half-asleep conversation about squirrels followed immediately by 16 hours of gentle snoring. 

There was a tiny meow from the hallway and Humph poked his little fluffy head around the bedroom door, meowed again, then padded around the bed to jump up and land somewhere - quite accurately - in the vicinity of Louis's balls. The duvet and the blanket absorbed some of the shock, but Louis hissed in a sharp breath nevertheless. 

"You're a terrible fluffy monster," he told Humph in a low whisper, as Humph took precisely no notice whatsoever, turned in a circle and settled himself down in Louis's lap. "The testicles are a no-go zone, all right? I thought we'd had this discussion. No claws near the balls, Humph. Like, we've talked about this more than once." 

Humph licked at his paw. It was impossible to be mad at anything that had such fluffy little paws, and who snuggled into Louis's lap like a mobile hot water bottle. Even with the new duvet and added blankets, it was still pretty cold in Louis's flat, virtually-comatose bedsharers aside. That said, Harry was stirring, clearly having been woken up by a mixture of ball-focused fluffy cats and pain-ridden boyfriends. 

"Obviously you've not talked about it enough," Harry said in a vaguely human attempt at waking up. He buried his face in the pillow. "Christ. What time is it?"

"Dunno," Louis lied. "Lunchtime, I think."

"Ugh," Harry said, without opening his eyes. He rolled over and poked his cold nose into Louis's side. "I don't really remember getting here."

"Meow," Humph said, getting up and trying to reposition himself in the two centimetre gap between Harry's face and Louis's stomach. Louis removed the cat, rolled his eyes, and shuffled down the bed so that he was under the covers again and could rub his nose over Harry's. 

Humph made a general cat-like sound of reproach and settled down in the small of Harry's back. 

"You were pretty much dead on your feet," Louis said, dropping his phone somewhere under the bedclothes. He'd find it later. He was much more interested in letting his feet tangle with Harry's and bumping his knuckles into Harry's side. "Some interesting thoughts about squirrels, though. Your driver must have basically just ejected you from the car or something. You were well out of it."

"Drove myself," Harry said. His voice was all rough and sleepy, sexy as fuck. It had been an awful long time since Louis had got to hear Harry's sleepy, sated voice. 

"Haz, you didn't."

"Wanted to see you," Harry said, settling into Louis's side. He rubbed his nose over Louis's neck. "You smell like you."

"Good," Louis said. "But I like it better when you're alive, all right? No more zombie driving."

"Stopped and had a coffee on the motorway. Triple shot. Had to run round the car park just to stay awake before I set off again."

"Welcome break indeed." Louis let out a breath. He wondered if anyone had caught Harry running around a service station car park and taken a picture. _The Mirror_ would love that. He reached over and brushed a stupid curl off Harry's forehead. "Missed you."

"Missed you more," Harry said. He smiled, all sleepy and half out of it. He nuzzled a little closer, pressing his nose into the little patch of bare skin by the collar to Louis's hoodie. 

Louis let himself curl into Harry's arms, let the soft heat of Harry's body seep into his, let his warm breath catch against Harry's skin. He slipped a hand under Harry's t-shirt and let his fingers rest against Harry's sleep-warmed hip. "How long have I got you for?"

Harry made a quiet, sleepy sort of a sound. "Sunday night, I think. I'm on Radio 1 first thing Monday. Breakfast Show. Don't want to get stuck in traffic on Monday and miss it. Nick will kill me."

Louis had spent quite a bit of time on the fringes of Harry's life, hiding in the shadows as Harry continued to crest a wave of fame and attention. He still couldn't get his head around what that actually meant, what being with someone who had to rush off to be on a national radio show really felt like in reality and not in dreams. 

"That's weird as fuck," he said, snuggling a little further under the covers. This was worth taking the day off for, this moment here as he got to curl up with Harry with no stress or pressure or deadlines. A whole weekend for the two of them. Maybe the first of many. 

"Are you going to listen?" Harry asked, sleepily nuzzling Louis's throat. He smelled a little stale and a little tired, but Louis didn't care. 

"If it's before I start work." He could download the BBC Radio app on his new phone, and actually join the 21st century. "I'll listen again if not."

"Good," Harry said, licking Louis's jaw like it was totally normal and allowed. "I like it when I know you can listen. It's like you're cheering me on."

Louis could say something cheesy about how he would always be cheering Harry on, but Harry's attention had moved from his jaw to the corner of Louis's mouth, his tongue sticking out. He licked at Louis's lips.

"Weirdo," he managed, but then Harry was kissing him instead, a little sleep-stale and dry, and Louis didn't care about Monday anymore. He cared about now, this single moment where he was in bed with pop star Harry Styles and Harry was _his_. Harry was focused on him, and on slipping his knee in between Louis's legs and whining a little against Louis's mouth, and there wasn't anything to get in their way. Nothing. 

Humph meowed, padding incautiously over Harry's shoulder and Louis's chest to sit quite carelessly half on and off Louis's head. 

For a moment, there was silence, then Harry burst out laughing. 

"That's it," Louis said. "I'm having him adopted." He relented immediately, shifting so that he could wrap his arms around Humph's fluffy tummy and gather him up into a hug. "I'm not having you adopted. I wouldn't. Don't listen to me. Do you think he knows I wouldn't?" That last bit was directed towards Harry and not his stupid fluffball of a cat. 

"He knows." Harry sat up in bed, stroking his fingertips down Humph's back. "Course he knows."

Humph padded his paws against Louis's chest. Louis ducked in to kiss the top of his head. "You and me against the world, Humph."

Harry kissed Louis's shoulder. "Needed to go and brush my teeth anyway."

Louis rolled his eyes. "Go on, then. But hurry up. I'm locking Humph in the living room so he can keep his modesty intact."

"Oh yeah?" Harry stumbled out of bed. He grinned. "You got plans for us, then?"

"Not in front of the cat." Louis made a big show of covering Humph's ears. "He's an innocent soul."

Harry just laughed, and headed for the bathroom. 

It took Louis a minute of cuddling his cat before he gave up and got out of bed. He had the heating on for half an hour every morning now, taking the edge off getting out of bed at the arsecrack of dawn, but it was hours since it'd been on and the place was cold. He'd got through the morning by wearing his hoodie in bed, but when he went to deposit Humph into the innocent sanctuary of the living room and in front of the remains of his breakfast, Louis unplugged the oil radiator at the same time so he could wheel it back into the bedroom and at least take the edge off the biting cold. Trust this cold snap to last all flipping month. "Sorry, babe," he told the cat. "But you've got lots of fluff on you to keep you warm, and I'll let you back in after we're done." It definitely felt weird to be sin-binning his cat for the duration so that he and Harry could have sex, so he fed Humph a revolting-smelling cat treat to show him he was still loved and looked after even if the bedroom door was closed. 

Humph blinked up at him, then ate the whole cat treat in one go. 

The flush went in the bathroom then the tap turned on, so Louis wheeled the radiator into the bedroom, careful to close the doors after him, and plugged it in on Harry's side of the bed, turning the thermostat up quite a lot so that the radiator would heat up. It had been nice, these last couple of weeks. There had been extra blankets and warmer bedclothes to sleep in, a hot water bottle every night, and it was amazing how much happier he could feel when it wasn't as cold on the inside of his flat as it probably was outside. He'd texted his mum without worrying about needing to top up his phone. He'd even rung home after work a couple of times, catching his sisters and letting them excitedly tell him about what they'd done at school and ask him over and over again when he was coming home for a visit. 

He'd thought that the shame of living like this, of failing, of not knowing how to fix anything without the overwhelming and ridiculous over-support of his friends and family, of barely surviving… he'd though that the shame would swallow him whole. He'd got lost in it, let it steal from him that belief he'd used to have in himself. Forgotten that he was here, that he was more than just the sum of his credit card debt and his damp, cold, miserable flat. He didn't know when it was that he'd lost that safety net, that knowledge that he wasn't alone and that there were people he could turn to, but he had, and the shame of it had almost destroyed him. It hadn't gone away, that shame, that failure. It still sat there, nestled in his belly like a dragon in a cave, every so often sweeping out a clawed hand just to remind him he could still get hurt. He hadn't fixed any of this himself. His mum had made it sound so strong, _you're never alone. You're an army_. It just didn't feel all that strong when he reminded himself of all he'd managed to fail to achieve when left to succeed alone. 

"Babe," Harry said, coming up behind him and settling his hands on Louis's hips. "I think you've forgotten to get undressed."

Louis let out a ragged breath. It was in the past. There was no point focusing on what things used to be like. So what if he couldn't do it alone? So what. He was on his way back to an even keel and this time he had Niall and Liam as mates, and his mum knew it all, and his sisters wanted him back. He'd even had practice selling himself in a job application for that charity reception admin job, with Niall taking over telling him what to write, and if he'd done it once he could do it again. And he had Harry, who loved him, and was trying to do the right thing, and was trying to be better than he had been before. And this time, when it all went pear-shaped, Louis wasn't going to let it destroy him like it had done last time. When Harry left him, like he inevitably would do when he remembered London was a million times more exciting than babysitting a petulant cat and watching the telly with Louis of an evening, Louis was going to be all right. He had it all planned out. 

It didn't mean he wasn't 100% in this until that happened, though. 

"I've not forgotten," Louis told him. He finished fiddling with the radiator, and straightened up, turning around. Harry had lost his t-shirt somewhere between the bathroom and here, just in the pyjama bottoms he'd slept in. Louis tried to pay attention to something other than the giant butterfly tattooed on Harry's stomach. "I've just not got round to it yet."

Harry grinned, reaching for Louis and tilting his chin up with the crook of his finger. "My eyes are up here."

Louis nudged him away. "Your other bits are much more interesting," he said. "No one else has four nipples."

"Dogs do."

There was a pause. "Right." 

Harry cleared his throat. "Uh. It's cold."

Louis rolled his eyes, pulled his hoodie and his t-shirt over his head in one sort-of smooth movement, grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him back towards the bed. They stumbled back onto the sheets, Harry landing on top of him with an _oomph_. It might not have been the most graceful choice of way to get under the duvet, but they managed it, shuffling down under the covers until the duvet was over their heads and they were trapped underneath it in the dark, both of them still in pyjama bottoms and socks. 

The duvet settled neatly over them both and Louis lay on his back and blew gently on the sheets. 

"At least it's warm under here," Harry said. 

"I've put the radiator on. It should warm up."

"I know." Harry shuffled around under the covers so that he was plastered to Louis's side. "I'm glad you're warmer. You know. When I'm not here."

Louis pulled the duvet down from over their heads so it wasn't quite so stifling. "Humph likes it too. He always sits as close to the radiator as he can when we've got it on."

"Clever cat." Harry pressed a kiss to Louis's bare shoulder. "Are you going to let me kiss you properly now?"

"I didn't stop you before," Louis pointed out. "Humph was protecting my honour."

"He's a very protective cat. Got your best interests at heart."

"He does." Louis grinned, rolling onto his side so that he feel Harry's dick against his thigh through their pyjamas. "You going to keep those on, or what?"

"Waiting to be invited."

Louis leaned in for a quick kiss. "How about that?"

Harry pondered for a moment. "Dunno. Might need to be a bit more explicit."

Louis rolled his eyes, reached down under the covers and pushed down his own pyjama bottoms, toeing off his socks at the same time. It might not be the smoothest of moves, but he emerged victorious nevertheless, completely naked and with his dick perking up and looking interested in proceedings. "Invitation enough?"

Harry lifted up the sheets to take a look. "Might be," he said, and peeled off his own pyjama bottoms with the grace and determination of a duck on land. Louis wasn't exactly sure why he loved him, but it probably wasn't anything to do with his coordination. He couldn't help but smile. 

"So," Louis said. 

"So," Harry said, and he grinned, ducking his gaze and shuffling a little closer. His dick bumped against Louis's thigh, already a little slick at the tip. "Have we talked about how much I missed you?"

Louis pretended to ponder. "Not really. Last night you told me about squirrels and then passed out. There wasn't anything in there about missing me."

"Huh." Harry moved a little closer still, until his nose was touching Louis's, and Louis had to go a little cross-eyed to focus. "So nothing about how you're the only thing I can think about, then?"

"Unless it was carefully masked by squirrel stories."

Harry considered. "Might have been." He stuck his tongue out and licked at Louis's mouth. He kept doing that. It was weird. Louis liked it. "I still love you, though." 

"Underneath the squirrels." Louis stroked his hand down Harry's side. This is what he'd been waiting for, the freedom to just touch him, to map out his skin beneath his fingertips, to take things at whatever speed they wanted. "Missed you too, you know." 

Harry made a soft sound in his throat, and curled his fingers into Louis's hair. "It's getting long."

"Can't figure out if I can afford to have a haircut or not. Probably can. It's like, what, seven quid to get your hair cut? Still fucking terrified I'll fuck it all up. What the fuck do I know about doing all right with money? And don't tell me you'll pay for it, that's not the point. How do you know if you're doing all right or not?"

Harry pressed closer. "I don't know. Knowing what's got to come out of your bank before the next time you get paid? And how much you're going to spend on food and stuff? Then working out the rest? I don't know any more than you do."

"Except you've got enough money that it doesn't matter."

Harry kissed his cheek. "We can try and figure it out later, if you want."

Louis's hand found its way to the small of Harry's back, to the curve of his arse, to the cleft between his cheeks. "Yeah, cos that's what you want to do on your weekend off from being on the telly and in magazines and shit. Primary school budgeting for shit adults who don't know what the fuck they're doing."

"Hey," Harry said. "None of that. I thought we talked about this. You're so fucking cruel to yourself and you don't deserve it. You've got all that stuff from that thing you went to at the library. Maybe there's stuff online too. Or an app for your phone."

"Maybe." The thing was, he couldn't just shift from being desperately, terrifyingly, horribly in debt to being safe and secure overnight, even with everyone's help. He was just scared he didn't have it in him to ever get there, that there was something inside of him that just screamed _failure_ , and he was destined to slip back down to where he was before. He didn't ever, ever want that. And one day Harry would get bored of him, or get bored of traipsing up the M1 every free weekend, so at some point he wouldn't have Harry to lean on anymore. He couldn't follow Harry down to London to head that off at the pass. It was too expensive, and too fast, and he didn't have any friends there, and if it went wrong with him and Harry, there was no way he could support himself financially - or emotionally, judging by the last couple of years - by himself. It was hard enough in the arse end of the north where the cost of rent was almost beyond him, without having to pay hundreds of pounds more a month for a place in London that was smaller than this. 

He had to be able to do this by himself. 

"We'll look, okay?" Harry said, pressing a kiss to the corner of Louis's mouth. "And I don't know how to say this without sounding patronising, but I'm so proud of you, you know?"

"What the fuck?"

"I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of how hard you've worked and how you've looked after Humph and how you've kept yourself going. I want to tell you all the time but I don't know how to say it."

"Humph needed looking after," Louis said, in rather a small voice. He didn't think that Harry was making fun of him, but he had to be. 

"I know. And you did it."

Louis let out a breath. He hid his face in Harry's neck. "Can we not?" he said finally. "Can we just… not, for a bit? Do this instead?"

Harry kissed his ear. "It's all I've been thinking about for two weeks. Just this. You. Me. Together."

"We're spending a lot of time talking about it instead of doing it." Louis tried to sound petulant. He wasn't sure how well he was doing. Harry was still kissing his ear. He splayed his fingers over Harry's skin. 

"Figures," Harry said, and he rolled Louis over onto his back and straddled him, duvet falling down around their hips. Harry was more than half hard, dick curving up towards his belly. He pinned Louis's wrists to the pillow before leaning down to kiss him. Louis arched up to meet him, kissing him back, Harry's breath minty fresh. "Better?"

"Suppose," Louis lied, rolling his eyes even as Harry was leaning down for another kiss. He rolled his hips up a little, trying to get a little friction for his dick. Harry arched back away from him though, mouth curving up into a smile even as Louis tried to kiss it off him. 

"Missed you," Harry said, kissing him again. "Missed you, missed you." His skin was already starting to pebble with the chill in the air, and Louis longed to make him warm, keep him warm forever so he never had to feel as cold as Louis had felt these last few months. 

"Let me touch you," he said, in between kisses, and Harry let go of his wrists then, dropping down to his knees so he could hold himself up over Louis and keep on kissing him. Louis pulled the duvet back up over them both before sliding his hands down into the small of Harry's back again. His dick was properly hard now, chubbed up and leaking a little over his stomach, and he sneaked his fingers down over Harry's arse and down to his hole so that Harry groaned into Louis's kiss. Coming back together after so long apart was weird; there were things that hadn't changed - Harry liking his arse played with, for example - but so much was different. Harry's hair, his tattoos, the way he kissed. There had been people in between, life lessons and sex lessons and those dicks that had stolen Harry's pictures and shared them with the world, but when it was the two of them together like this, it felt so much easier to push all that away and pretend the world was just theirs. "You still like getting rimmed?"

Harry shivered. "God, yeah."

Louis grinned. "You gonna let me, then, or what?"

"I was going to fuck you."

"Still can." Louis stroked his fingers over Harry's arse, arching up again to kiss him, teeth nipping his lip so that Harry groaned. "Didn't say I was going to make you come."

Harry flopped off him, burying his face in the pillow and spreading his legs. 

"Someone's eager."

"It's been ages since I've been eaten out," Harry told him, voice a bit muffled from where he'd buried his face in the pillow. Louis very decidedly did not think about anyone else having sex with Harry. He shuffled under the duvet instead, settling himself in between Harry's legs. He spread his cheeks just so he could get a better look, pressing his thumb to Harry's hole so that Harry shivered and opened his legs a little wider. "I won't last long."

Louis leaned in and licked a stripe over Harry's arse cheek. Harry made a soft, quiet kind of a noise and it settled down in Louis's chest, a warm kind of need to satisfy taking up residence in his heart. "Down, boy," Louis told him, splaying his fingers over Harry's arse. He leaned in and pressed his tongue to Harry's hole, pausing for breath as Harry groaned. When he licked him, Harry trembled with it, trying to open his legs even further, but Louis flicked him in the thigh and kept on licking him. He knew what Harry wanted, why he was trying to push back onto Louis's tongue, but Louis wouldn't give in. Not yet. He wanted Harry groaning and pliant beneath him, wanted him melting into the sheets before they moved onto the part where Harry put his dick in Louis. He licked him slower this time. Harry was trying to rub his dick against the sheets.

"Louis, please."

"I'm busy," Louis told him, and flicked him in the thigh again. Harry whined, pushing his bum into the air, and Louis grinned at that. This time when he went down, he concentrated on just Harry's hole, tongue slipping just inside so that Harry whined and tried to fuck down against the sheets. He did it again, just because he could, and then again and again. 

"Louis, god. If you want me to fuck you, you'd better stop."

Louis didn't want to stop. He wanted to eat Harry out until he was begging for it, until he came all over Louis's sheets, until he was desperate and Louis could take him right over the edge. 

"Louis."

Reluctantly, he sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He cupped his dick, thumb swiping over the slit. "Still easy for it, then." 

Harry looked over his shoulder at him. His smile was easy too. "Course," he said. "Your mouth always was fucking amazing."

Louis rolled his eyes and flopped down next to him on the bed, pulling the covers up. He wrapped his fist around his dick and gave it a bit of a tug, but Harry pushed his hand away. 

"Oi. My turn." 

Harry's hand was bigger than Louis's, and he remembered that Louis liked his balls played with too. He leaned in to kiss Louis again, covering Louis's mouth with his own, and Louis let him take the lead. Louis rocked his dick up into Harry's fist, warmth sliding over him as Harry continued to touch him. 

"I love you," Harry said, in between kisses. "Love you, Lou."

And Christ, Louis knew this wasn't going to last forever, but whilst it lasted, he was going to give this his all. "Love you right back," he said, and he slid his hand into Harry's hair, holding him close as he rocked up into his fist. Harry's eyes were bright this close up, and Louis kept his gaze locked on him. "Haz. I love you."

"Let me love you," Harry said, and maybe he meant _let me fuck you_ , Louis didn't know, but he nodded anyway. Whatever the question was, right now his answer was yes, regardless. He reached over to his bedside table and pulled open the drawer. Harry might be a pop star but he better not be too posh for Louis's pound shop condoms and his bottle of conditioner. 

He rolled back over with a condom in one hand and the conditioner in the other. "How do you want me?"

Harry laughed, rolling his eyes. "Sexy," he said, reaching for the condom packet. He tore it open and started to position it over his dick. "I want to see you. I don't care how we do it so long as I get to see your face. Ride me, or you on your back, I don't mind."

Louis reached over to roll the condom down over Harry's erection. He held his palm out for Harry to pour some of the conditioner into his hand, and then he wrapped his fist around Harry's dick and started to slick him up. "I'm lazy," he said finally. "This time I'm going to let you do all the work. I'll ride you later."

"See that you do," Harry said. He grinned, ducking in to kiss Louis again. "Want me to finger you open?"

"Been thinking about it for two fucking weeks. So, like, yeah."

Harry nudged Louis's legs apart and they scrambled about trying to shove a pillow under Louis's hips so that Harry had a better angle. Harry's long fingers were made to finger Louis open, to slip inside of him, to crook at just the right moment so that Louis reached for him and left fingertip marks around Harry's wrist. 

"You all right?"

"Course," Louis lied, since he sort of wasn't. All this time he'd been holding himself together through thick and thin, cold and never properly satisfied with the food he was eating and with only his cat for company. He'd done his best for Humph, time after time, and he'd tried to pretend it was enough, but it wasn't, and it hadn't been. He'd cautiously, carefully let his world expand to let Liam and Niall in, then Harry had crashed back into his life, devastated and radiating misery, and Louis had had to deal with all of that. He'd had to deal with all those little pockets of hurt he'd been carrying around with him all this time, all these cold bits inside of him that he'd shoved away into corners and pretended didn't exist, all those secret, private, miserable parts of him that were Harry-shaped and hurting. He couldn't fix them all in a few weeks of trying to move past them, but maybe even getting to feel like he was more equipped to deal with them was enough. And he'd helped Harry too, helped him feel strong enough to stand up and admit who he was, helped him to stop radiating hurt and betrayal and to face up to things instead of running away. His world felt bigger - and safer - than it had a few weeks ago. 

"You sure?" Harry asked. His brow was furrowed. 

"Yeah," Louis said. "Just happy you're here. You know."

Harry crooked his fingers, and Louis let out a low moan, unable to help himself. "Yeah," he said. "I know."

Louis gave into it then, melting down into the sheets as Harry fingered him open, pushing down onto his fingers and whining when Harry caught him at just the right angle. "Fuck me," he begged. "Please, Haz. Fuck me."

Harry leaned in and kissed him, breathless already. "Love you."

Louis knew. He _knew_. He grabbed Harry's hand, lacing his fingers with Harry's, even as they were shifting position and Harry was lining himself up, ready to press inside of him. 

That first push, though, that first moment where his body moved to accommodate Harry, where he groaned through the pressure until it tipped some balance inside of him and pleasure - warm, desperate, beautiful pleasure - started to curl in his belly. He let go of Harry's hand and reached for his dick, needing to touch himself, wanting to help that pleasure on its way towards his inevitable orgasm. 

"Move," he breathed. "Move."

And Harry did. He fucked slowly up into him, his eyes fixed on Louis's face, then his hand around his dick, then back up to meet his gaze. "You're amazing," he told Louis. "You're so fucking amazing."

Louis wasn't sure he would ever truly believe that, but Harry seemed to. His eyes shone, and Louis made a grab for his hand again, holding on as Harry fucked him breathless, until they were both panting and flushed and desperate and Louis's orgasm twisted inside of him. It pulsed through him, hot and hard, and he said Harry's name, over and over as he started to come, striping across his stomach as Harry fucked up into him, needy and hard and perfect. 

When Harry came, Louis moved along with him, hips rocking up as Harry's staccato rhythm finally shuddered to a tumultuous, breathless halt. Harry, flushed and sweaty and chest rising. Harry, who Louis loved. Harry, who loved him back. 

"Come on," Louis said, when Harry didn't move. He was still inside of Louis and he slid out carefully, one hand still on the condom. He tied it off and put it in the carrier bag that Louis was still using for a rubbish bag, wiping down his dick with some of the loo roll that was on the bedside table for precisely this purpose. He made a cursory effort at cleaning away some of the lotion from Louis's arse, too. 

"You're too kind," Louis said, and it sounded like a joke but it didn't feel like one. Harry pulled the covers up over Louis and then slipped under them, tangling his feet with Louis's, tugging him close so that he could run his fingers through Louis's hair and kiss him over and over again. 

"You've got me," Harry told him, in between kisses. "You've got me and I'm not going anywhere, I swear."

Louis wanted so, so much to believe him. He kissed him instead, hooking his foot around Harry's ankle, and lost himself in moving forward. 

~*~

They ordered takeaway later on, a Chinese, Harry's treat, and took the duvet through to the living room to wait the hour for it curled up on the sofa with the telly on, Humph in Louis's lap and a beer in hand. 

"Do you fancy having a kickabout in the park tomorrow?" Harry asked. "See if Liam and Niall are around?"

Louis narrowed his eyes. "Since when have you voluntarily taken up Sunday footie?"

Harry shrugged. He had his toes shoved under Louis's thighs, all of him pretzeled up with his knees up to his chin, squished into Louis's tiny sofa beside him. "Since I realised you enjoyed it and it was something fun I could do with you?" 

Louis didn't look at him. "You sure?"

"Wouldn't have suggested it otherwise. Text them."

Louis created a new group on WhatsApp and called it _Sunday Footie_. He added Liam and Niall to it, then added Harry too. Harry's phone immediately buzzed with a notification. "That all right?"

"Course."

 _Harrys up and so we were thinkin we could play sum footie in the park tomorrow if u are both up for it???_ He pressed send. "What time?"

Harry went a bit pink. "Um. Elevenish? Maybe?"

"Harry. What is it?"

"Uh, there's um, something I sort of wanted to do in the afternoon. Just me and you."

Louis sent another message that just said _11 alright?_ and put his phone down on the side. "What kind of a thing?"

Harry took a swig of his beer. "So, um. I've been thinking, all right, and, like, hear me out—"

Louis's heart started to pound.

"Um, so, I was talking to my mum when she was down last week. Talked to her for ages actually. Told her all about me and you and last time and what I did and how I hid you away and everything. How you'd moved to London but I kept you secret and then—then broke up with you and um, just kind of left you there to fend for yourself." 

Louis remembered. How could he fucking forget? He reached for Harry's hand, though, just to keep himself anchored to the here and now. He didn't live in the past anymore. He was here, and Harry was here, and they'd both fucking grown up. 

"And I was talking to her about, like, being with you this time, and how I wanted things to be different. And what I could do to, uh, make it different this time."

"Harry—"

"Hear me out, please?" He squeezed Louis's hand. "So, anyway. I've arranged to see, um, god, is this the place to start? I thought—okay, so, like, last time, you gave up a lot to come and be with me, right? You moved to London and everything. So I thought that this time, it should be me that does the big gesture. And it's not like I won't have to keep somewhere in London for times like this, when I'm working there and it will make more sense to have a base there, and I don't know about recording or anything, I haven't thought that through yet, but, like, I don't know—"

"Harry, for fuck's sake."

Harry looked at him. "I'm going to rent a place up here. I thought about buying, but Mum said maybe I could think about that, like, a year down the line. Or earlier. Just, like, rent somewhere for a bit first, you know? Get a base and a feel for the place. Helps you know the areas and stuff, right?"

"Christ," Louis said. "What the fuck?"

"I've got an appointment with an estate agent tomorrow. There's a house to rent that looks okay? I thought maybe you could come with me, see if you like it."

"What does it matter if I like it?" Louis's head was spinning. Harry was going to get a place up here? Harry had talked to his mum about _buying_? Louis didn't even bother thinking about how much money somebody must have spare to just conjure up a deposit out of nothing. "You're going to rent up here? But why?"

"Because you're important to me and I want to show you that I'm in this. That I'm invested in us. That it's not like last time when you couldn't trust me to stick around." He looked so earnest, and he was holding Louis's hand so tight. "And because… Louis, I never want to take anything away from you. Your independence. You've fought so hard for all of this and, like, I was talking it over with my mum how I could show you that I don't want to take any of that away from you. The place tomorrow, it's, uh, it's got this bedroom that I thought could be yours. If you wanted. Like, when your lease is up here, you could move in with me, if you wanted. You and Humph. And we could work out a rent that's the same as you're paying here if you want that, or less if you'd let me, but obviously the bills would be shared, and I've checked and we can have pets in the house so Humph would have a whole house to run around in. And you'd get your deposit back from here and you could just, like, save it and stuff so you could get yourself back on your feet."

"So… uh, we wouldn't be sharing a room?" Louis couldn't get his head around this. He couldn't get his head around any of it. Harry, talking about moving away from London to the arse end of fucking nowhere, because Louis lived there and Louis was important. 

"I'd like to," Harry said. "I just, um." He went pink. "My mum said that it's easier to build up to something than it is to jump straight in and then want to go slower. And that you might want to go slower because of last time. And I want you to be independent. I thought I could pay Willie and you could tell him what sort of security you'd want from moving in, like, our own kind of tenancy agreement and he'd write it up and get my signature. So that you didn't have to worry about me chucking you out or anything. I mean, I won't, but I know how scared you've been and how I left you high and dry before, and how it might just make you feel safer if there was something more formal in place to protect you." He paused. "So, um. What do you think?"

Louis wasn't entirely sure he was thinking at all. "Your mum thinks you should move up here?"

"My mum thinks that everyone needs people around them that are kind, and that look out for each other. And, um, I'd like to be that for you, like Niall and Liam. When, um, when Humph got lost they came right over to help find him, right? They just came over. And I'm away sometimes and I'm not asking you to give up everything to go somewhere where you don't have people to help you find Humph. I mean, my friends are nice and I want you to meet Nick, and he would definitely help you find Humph, but you don't know him yet."

"I'm not losing Humph again. Not ever."

"I know. But if you did."

Louis couldn't think about Humph going missing again. His little grey and white fluffball. If he hadn't had Humph to get up for and look after day after day, his life would have been a hundred times worse. Even at his lowest, he'd always had his cat. His beautiful, grumpy, fur-shedding cat. "They got straight in the car to come over."

"I know. That's what I'm saying." He squeezed Louis's hand. "Before all this, I didn't like who I was very much anymore. I told you how upset Nick was with me for keeping it all secret. I don't want to be that person again. I don't want to keep secrets from my friends. I don't ever want to hurt someone the way I hurt you because I was too scared to be honest. So, yeah. My mum wants me to be a better person, and I'm a better person when I'm with you, so. This is what I want to work at. You and me. And I wouldn't ask you to move again. To risk that much when your life is here and you're just getting it back. So I'm asking if you'll think about moving in with me when your lease is up, and to make sure you know you'd have your own space for your own things, and also a legal agreement so that you're happy."

"What would you have? What do you get out of this?"

Harry looked surprised. "You," he said softly. "I'd get a chance to be with you."

Louis felt like crying. It felt all tight in his chest. "You've got that now."

"A better one, then."

"You can't ever take Humph."

"I know. You can put that in the agreement."

"He loves me best."

"Yes," Harry said. "He does."

"You'd have to be really careful to shut all the doors properly so that he couldn't get out. That would have to be in the agreement too." 

"I promise to take all necessary precautions to keep Humph safe." Harry paused. "Is there anything that you want, you know, for you?"

Louis looked down at his knees, at his sleepy, grumpy cat who was curled up in his lap. "I hated finding out from the newspaper," he said finally. "If ever there's anything… don't let me find out from the newspaper. Tell me first. No matter how bad. Promise me."

Harry nodded. "Okay. I promise." He swallowed. "So. Tomorrow? You'll come with me to look around?"

It took a long time for Louis to answer. "All right," he said softly, and he stayed holding onto Harry's hand, stroking Humph, until the doorbell rang with their food. 

~*~

The house was detached, but not as big as Louis was worried it might have been. It was on the road a bit further out of town, but not that far from a big Asda, and close to the bus stop so Louis could get to work. Just a normal, 1930s family house with a front wall and a garden. Four bedrooms, but one of them was tiny and Harry said they could just keep things in it. There were two big double bedrooms, one of them over the garage and one at the back of the house, and Louis spent a long time in the one over the garage thinking about what it might look like with his clothes all over the floor and Humph sprawled out across an imaginary bed. There was a driveway and a gate with a faulty catch - Harry was already telling the estate agent that would have to be fixed before he signed anything - and downstairs, a big living room, dining room, kitchen and utility room. There was a patio outside where they could have a barbecue. 

"What do you think?" Harry asked when the estate agent had popped outside to make a call to the landlords and to give them a minute to talk it over. 

"It's nice," Louis said. He was leaning over the kitchen counter, looking out the window to the garden beyond. "Humph will knock anything off any windowsill, just so you know."

"We'll keep the breakable things somewhere else, then." Harry tucked his hand into the curve of Louis's elbow, resting his chin on Louis's shoulder. "What are you thinking?"

Louis made a face, and Harry stepped back far enough that he could slip an arm around Louis's waist. "That I'll fuck this up? That something will happen and none of this will come true. I don't know." The house was nice - too nice for Louis, who was used to leaking ceilings and ill-fitting windows and being freezing fucking cold - but not nice enough for a pop star who was on the telly and the radio and in magazines. "Surely you want somewhere with, like, jacuzzis and those weird swimming pools that look like they're on the edge of the world."

"Nah," Harry said. "My step dad's got a swimming pool. We can go there if we want to. I want this to be for both of us. I want you to be happy if we live here." He kissed Louis's cheek. "I want it to feel like it's yours as much as mine."

Louis didn't know what to say. They'd come so far, and been alone for so long. It barely seemed possible that they even had a chance for a future, let alone this. Let alone a home. Let alone time and space for them both to feel okay with who they were. "Who'd have thought it?" he said finally. 

"What?"

"Me and you," he said. "Back together."

Harry hooked his chin over Louis's shoulder again. Louis reached for his hand, and Harry laced their fingers together. "What do you say then? Me and you. Renting this place. Moving in."

Louis shifted a little so that he could reach Harry's mouth. He kissed him, brief and quick. "We'd better go back to mine," he said finally. "We've got some news for the cat."

Harry's face curved into a wide grin. "Yeah," he said, smiling, and Louis felt hope settle deep down in his chest and take root. "Let's go and tell Humph."

[end]

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post](http://magicalrocketships.tumblr.com/post/157161260053/emperors-new-clothes-harrylouis-92k-complete)


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